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C'.OFYRIC.HT DEPOSIT. 



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Copyright 1905 
BY Mart King 



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eignor (Seorge 
Ibobart 2)oane 



— Printed and Published by — 

SCHULTZ 6 GASSER 

No. Sixty-eight Market Street 
Newark ^ ^ '^ Ng New ]ersey 



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A WORD OR TWO OF INTRODUCTION 



'B man be waa to all tbe people ^eat" 




ONSIGNOR George Hobart Doane, 
the rector of St. Patrick's Cathedral 
for nearly half a century, was an 
ardent lover of Art and Nature. He 
was the practical friend of the poor, 
the sick, the orphans, and the aged. 
A citizen who labored unceasingly for 
the moral and material improvement of 
the City of Newark, he was a man of 
learning and culture, his knowledge of books being 
most extensive. He had seen the works of the old 
masters in oil paintings and sculpture in the art galleries 
of Europe, he had a personal acquaintance with many 
of the best modern artists, American and foreign, and 
he liked to talk and write about what he had seen for 
the information of his friends in particular and the 
public in general. For many years the Monsignor 
was a valued contributor to Newark newspapers, treat- 
ing of a variety of subjects. He advocated in his 
letters, cleaner streets, better pavements and sewers, 
substantial public buildings, more parks for the people 
and free band concerts in the parks. He originated 
the free art loan exhibitions in the Public I^ibrary to 
inculcate in the minds of the people a love for good 
art. His letters to the Sunday Call were literary gems, 
for he was a master of pure English and his style was 
simple and beautiful. 

These communications were heart to heart talks of 
the Monsignor with the reading public — his purpose 




(Won0t0nor (Beorge %. ©oane 

from a photograph taken in 1904 



Biztttts of QYlondgnor ©oane 



Bssei County parl?s 



To the Editor of the Sunday Call: 

Finis coronat opus — the end crowns the work. The Park 
Commissioners must have had this thought in their minds 
when they applied to the Legislature for permission to bor- 
row one more million with which to finish their work. Pur- 
chase of real estate, engineering, laying out of the grounds, 
constructions of roads, etc., are all done, and well done, 
with the money they have had at their disposal. A thou- 
sand and one things remain to be done, the finishing touches 
have to be put, and that million will do as much in its way 
as the four that have gone before it. Fortunately, that bill 
passed the Legislature, as well as two other bills making 
provision for the maintenance of the parks. I admire the 
wisdom with which they were drawn. They certainly are 
sure of the Governor's signature. Two of the bills are to 
be referred to the popular vote next November, and can we 
doubt the result? The time has gone by for arguing in favor 
of the parks. When they were in the abstract, the question 
might be asked, why? But now that they are in the con- 
crete, they speak in their beauty, their convenience, their 
utility, for themselves. As the spring is coming on, I try 
to go to Branch Brook Park once a week to watch the grass 
as it throws oflf its brown and takes on its emerald hue, the 
trees as the leaves begin to appear, the plants and bushes 
as they grow green, and all the marvellous changes which 
nature, with her two enchanter's wands, the sun and the 
rain, works every year before our eyes as she weaves her 
magic spell. Recently I have noticed that the names have 



lo ©oane feettetB 

been put on some of the trees. I trust there will be more, 
so that the park will become a school of arboriculture. The 
names are given both in Latin, the botanical name, and in 
English, and the place or country of which the tree is in- 
digenous. I saw the same thing in London last summer in 
the Royal Horticultural Society's gardens in Regent's Park. 
At the last meeting of the Wednesday Club some idea 
could be formed of the progress Newark is making, as views 
were given of the beautiful Public Library, with its ex- 
quisite details; the wonderful Prudential group of buildings, 
great oak grown from a little acorn planted less than thirty 
years ago; the new Court House, Citv Hall, and, in the end, 
Mr. McFarland gave his views and interesting descriptions 
of the seven parks of Essex County. Reader, do you know 
their names? — Eastside, Westside, Weequahic Reservation, 
Branch Brook, Orange, Eagle Rock Reservation and South 
Mountain Reservation. In this connection I might ask an- 
other question. Reader, have you ever been inside the 
Public Library and seen its beauty and its convenient ar- 
rangement? I ask the question because I often meet per- 
sons who, though they constantly pass it, have never taken 
the trouble to cross its threshold, go up the marble stairs, 
admire the columns and arches, enter the distribution room 
and the reading room and the children's room, all of them 
as fine as anything of the kind on the face of the earth. 
Apart from its use as a place for reading and for getting 
books, it is "a thing of beauty and a joy forever," and as 
such should be seen by every citizen. 

One of the most interesting features of Mr. McFarland's 
exhibition was the contrast shown between the parks as 
they are and the parks as they were. They were perfect 
transformation scenes. Who could believe that the old 
depository for rubbish should now be the southern division 
of Branch Brook Park; the old Blue Jay swamp, with its 
tangled undergrowth and stagnant water, should now be its 
northern division? There is no greater difference between 
black and white, and night and day, than between them. 
The same may be said of Orange Park, as it was and as it is. 
The Commissioners published the other day quite a list of 
the things, big and little, that they would do with the million 
dollars. They were all of them things very much to be 
desired, and absolutely necessary for the completion of their 
work. One of them was the clearing of Weequahic Lake of 
the reeds, raising the water, and making a beautiful lake a 



®odne feetferB n 

mile long and half a mile wide. This, surrounded by a belt 
of beautiful trees, will not only be most pleasing to the eye. 
but most useful for aquatic sports. The people of Essex 
County owe a debt to the Park Commissioners for the ad- 
mirable way in which they have accomplished their work. 
They ask nothing at their hands, but the people will have a 
chance next November of showing their appreciation of 
this work by voting in favor of the park bills passed by the 
Legislature, and in that way not only secure greater ad- 
vantages from the parks for themselves, but pass a vote of 
confidence in the men who have done so much to adorn and 
beautify the county in which we dwell, and express the wish 
that the parks should be left in their hands. 

G. H. DOANE. 
Newark, March 30, 1902. 



2)oovvoo^ Blossoms 



"Cornus Florida" is the botanical name of the dogwood. 
The Century Dictionary says of it: "Dogwood. Some sup- 
pose dogwood as applied to the wood of trees of the genus 
'cornus' to be a corruption of dagwood, a name equivalent 
to its other names, prickwood, skewer wood, so called be- 
cause, being firm, hard and smooth, it is used to make 
butchers' skewers; but the form dagwood is not found, and 
in this, as well as in its other applications, and in similar 
popular names of plants, it is not necessary to assume a 
definite intention in the use of the animal name. A tree of 
the genus cornus, the cornel, also called dogwood tree." 

Neltje Blanchan, in her beautiful book, "Nature's Gar- 
den," which, by the way, I owe to you, begins her notice of 
it in this way: "Has nature's garden a more decorative or- 
nament than the flowering dogwood, whose spreading, flat- 
tened branches whiten the woodland borders in May as if 
an untimely snowstorm had come down upon them, and in 
autumn paint the landscape with glorious crimson, scarlet 
and gold, dulled by comparison only with the clusters of 
vivid red berries among the foliage?" 

Reduced by the doctor's orders, and by the necessities 
of the case, while trying to recover from the effects of recent 
illness, to comparative inactivity, I take advantage of driv- 
ing in the afternoons, which is not only allowed but pre- 
scribed, to visit the parks, and specially those parts of the 



12 ©odttC B^tiUxB 

country where I know that the dogwood, to me the most 
beautiful thing in nature, and which is now in its full glory, 
is in bio 3m. Of the parks I have yet been able to visit, only 
five, Branch Brook, East Side, West Side, Orange (with its 
tulip bed worthy of Holland) and Weequahic. South Moun- 
tain Reservation and Eagle Rock are as yet a little too far 
afield. They say that time cures all things. I hope it will 
cure me. A very dear visitor told me the other day that 
Dr. Hun, of Albany, a perfect type of the old-fashioned 
physician, with his few v^'ords, but always to the point; his 
quaint and sententious sayings, used to tell slowly con- 
valescing patients, with a merry twinkle of his eye, that they 
needed "tinctura temporis," the tincture of time. I seem to 
need quarts, gallons, hogsheads of it! 

To one who has watched the parks through all the stages 
of their development, as I have, they constantly seem to 
increase in interest and beauty. You not only do not get 
used to them, but every time you see them your admiration 
increases, and every time they seem more beautiful than be- 
fore. Every time they seem different as the grass becomes 
greener and greener, the trees put on their panoply of leaves, 
and now one shrub and then another, now one flower and 
then another, following the sequence that nature has or- 
dained, bursts into bloom. Foliage and vegetation never 
had a better chance than they have had this spring. The 
only thing wanting has been a little more rain, but the 
parks do not show it as the advance of spring has been so 
gradual; it has kept so cool, and there has been no scorching 
sun to anticipate the heats of summer and dry everything up. 

What will not these parks be when the commissioners are 
able to put the finishing touches to them? Many, many, 
were enjoying Branch Brook Park yesterday afternoon on 
the land and on the water; the lake was like the "Basin" 
at Hamburg; driving and riding and cycling and walking 
and rowing, and every one who was there and who will be 
there during the summer will be sure to plump a vote for the 
appropriation next November that the end may crown the 
work! 

As for the dogwood there are many places in the neigh- 
borhood in which to see it. There is one on Mrs. Gibbs's 
place just as you turn down the old River road, now Her- 
bert place, from Belleville avenue, beyond the cemetery, to 
the left on the bank which is my indicator. I watch it, and 
it tells me every year when to go and see its companions in 



©oanc feefterc 13 

the country. One of the best places to see the dogwood is 
Northfield avenue, which is lined with dogwood trees on 
both sides, from the place where it starts by the old Harri- 
son house straight up the hill. Gregory avenue, which 
crosses Northfield avenue, turning to the left, is full of 
them, and so is Llewellyn Park from the Mt. Pleasant ave- 
nue entrance straight through to Eagle Rock avenue, and 
elsewhere. 

Another capital place to see it, and I was told of it some 
time ago by a friend, and it is the only place where you can 
see it "en masse" in profusion, a regular plantation of it, 
in clumps an^ clusters, is Ri ' cwood avenue, a little to the 
right of Bloomfield avenue, easily reached by carriage or 
trolley car or train on a branch of the Erie Railroad to 
Chestnut Hill Station. Alas, from there it will soon be 
gone, as real estate is beginning to assert itself. One house 
is already built, and the plot is sold, and will soon be built 
over, and the dogwood will disappear. 

People do not know it, they are so busy with shopping 
and calling, and all the comparatively little things of life, 
busy about nothing very often, but Newark is surrounded 
with good roads and beautiful drives. I have mentioned 
some of them, but where would you find a more beautiful 
one than up one side of the river to Belleville, where the 
view from the bridge is lovely, and down the other, espe- 
cially since the roadway on the east side has been so much 
improved; or out Washington avenue to where it ends down 
to the river and south along the west bank to the Satter- 
thwaite place, where there is a fine old house and a row of 
elm trees better than which you would have to go to Eng- 
land to see. 

It is only necessary to make these little excursions to 
realize in what pleasant places our lines have fallen, and 
to appreciate, as they should be appreciated, the city and 
the country in which we dwell. 

Alas, that, with regard to the city, two exceptions should 
have to be made; one, the shameful and disgraceful condi- 
tion of some of the asphalt streets, and the other, the un- 
tidiness of the streets in general, and the way that papers 
are left in the gutters and flying about the parks. I see that 
to-day gravel is actually being put on the paths in the parks. 
Perhaps, after all, the Street Commissioner and Board o:' 
Works are not asleep, as it would appear, but rousing from 



14 ®oane feetterc 

their long nap, and getting ready to remove these opprobria 
from the city of which they have charge. The wonder to 
me is that the residents in the streets referred to are as 
patient as they are, and that before now have not resorted 
to some strong measures to compel a redress of their 
grievances in which the whole city shares. 

There is another most beautiful drive which, since writing 
the above on Monday, I have been able to take. You go out 
Orange street to East Orange, turn into one of those diag- 
onal streets, which must have been a country road, Wash- 
ington street, pass Tory Corner, an old historic name which 
smacks of the Revolution, and continue on until you reach 
Eagle Rock avenue. This afternoon the flying shadows were 
playing on the Orange Mountains, the sun was glinting 
through the trees, there was a slight westerly breeze, no 
dust, and the thermometer was 68 degrees. Mounting the 
long hill, Eagle Rock Reservation is soon reached, and on 
the summit there lies before you one of the panoramas of 
the world. Coming back you drive through Llewellyn 
Park, more beautiful in dogwood time than at any other; 
down Park avenue, through Branch Brook Park, and so 
home. If you go to Europe and take such a drive you 
come home and rave about it, but it is as true of inanimate 
things as of animate, "A prophet is not without honor 
save in his own country and in his own house." 

May 15, 1902. G. H. DOANE. 



ail Seven at OLast 



Last Saturday afternoon I made a forced march, and 
visited South Mountain Reservation, the only one of the 
seven parks and reservations which I had not seen this 
spring. I broke my journey at the Country Club, that de- 
lightful place in the woods in Hutton Park, where I have 
been kindly made a guest, and then, after resting man and 
beast for a little while, pushed up the hill, witn dogwood 
on either side, up Northfield avenue to Cherry lane, and 
so across to South Orange avenue, the Orange reservoir in 
the valley between the two mountains looking like a lake. 
- South Mountain Reservation is a woodland tract of about 
2,000 acres, a domain belonging to the people, roughly 
bounded by the crests or ridges of First and Second Moun- 



®oane feetter0 15 

tains on the east and west, and Northfield avenue and 
Springfield avenue on the north and south, and intersected 
by South Orange avenue. To reach Cherry lane on North- 
field avenue you first mount the hill, then go down into the 
valley past St. Cloud, and then mount the hill again about 
half way to the top of the Second Mountain. The drive 
through Cherry lane, which is marked by a signboard, into 
which you turn to the left, carries you between the two 
mountains, one on either side, covered with foliage as thick 
as the leaves of Vallombrosa, only on the trees and not off 
them, in various tints of green. 

Arriving at South Orange avenue you turn up, cross the 
stone bridge over the Rahway River, mount the hill again 
until you come to Brookside drive, so marked; turn into 
that, to the left and south, and drive about two miles along 
it toward Millburn, the mountains, like walls, flanking you 
on either side. The ground becomes broken after about 
two-thirds of the way, and the road, with the lovely river 
purling along on the left (no more a river than the moun- 
tains are mountains, but it, a brook, and they, hills; they 
must have had grand ideas in the days when they were 
named), descends to the stream. It is worth while to drive 
beyond the ford, Thistle Mill Ford, along the river beyond 
what used to be Campbell's Pond, and is now a reservoir, 
until near Millburn, and then turn back to the ford, drive 
over the stones (there is a footbridge for pedestrians) 
through the river, with the checkrein loose so that the horse 
may drink, and up the bank on the opposite side. The road 
to the right, capitally engineered, leads through the woods 
in a winding way to the Crest road and Bear lane, on tne 
top of the First Mountain, and so out to South Orange 
avenue. The road to the left leads along the river on the 
opposite, the eastern, bank, to South Orange avenue, and is 
even more beautiful, with its glimpses of the river, than the 
one on the opposite side. 

After you emerge and begin to go down the hill there is a 
panorama only second to the one from Eagle Rock; the 
great city in the distance, and Staten Island, Kill van KuU, 
Newark and other cities and towns, hamlets and villages, 
farms, etc., scattered around on the plain beneath. Pass- 
ing through the village of South Orange and mounting 
again. Centre street is soon reached. Orange Park, Central 
avenue and home. So, now. within the last fev/ daj's, I have 



i6 ©oane feefterc 

seen all seven of the parks of Essex County, the jewels of 
her crown. 

Branch Brook Park showed a little the lack of rain last 
Sunday, but has since been abundantly supplied, thank God! 
The spiraea was the floral feature last Sunday, the bushes 
covered with their white clusters, the branches gracefully 
bending over with their weight. The little goat cart was 
well patronized at five cents a ride. To make it complete, 
there should be a saddled donkey or two! The laburnum, 
the French "pluie d'or," or rain of gold, is coming into 
bloom. A fine lawn tennis court has been laid out on the 
field opposite the greenhouses in the northern end. 

Yesterday a friend sent me some painted cup, one of the 
most exquisite of the flowers that grow wild in the woods. 
[ once wrote you a letter about it. The color scheme is a 
remarkable one, a red and a green, but a subdued red and 
green, minor keys in color, very n^uch the same tints as the 
cardinal flower, as if nature had dipped her brush in the 
same places on her palette to color them. According to 
"Nature's Garden," it is the humming bird's favorite flower. 

As to the streets of which I spoke last Sunday, we can 
all of us take "heart of grace." It was a case of "Post hoc, 
sed non propter hoc" — after it, but not on account of it — 
but Monday morning James street was ploughed up, and 
will soon be a new street. For the moment the residents 
may find the remedy worse than the disease, and like the 
frogs in one of Aesop's fables, wish they had King Log 
again instead of King Stork. But the work will soon be 
over, and James street and other asphalt streets restored 
to their former state, to the advantage and relief of all. 
North Broad street has been repaired, but is very dirty. 

I started this really as a postscriot to my last letter, to 
add a little to it which I had left unsaid, but it has grown 
to the dimensions of a letter by itself. When I look back 
over these drives, and the beauty I have recently seen, 
iove of country grows and burns in my heart, and the lines 
of Scott repeat themselves to me with a kind of exultation: 
"Breathes there a man with soul so dead 
Who never to himself hath said, 
This is my own, my native land!" 

Newark, May 20, 1902. G. H. DOANE. 



®oane feetters 17 



1Rbot)oC>en&rons IRow. 



In the annual floral procession the rhododendron in Llewel- 
lyn Park succeeds the dogwood. As the one goes out the 
other comes in. Rhododendron comes from rodon, Greek 
for rose, and dendron, Greek for tree, and is the rosetree in 
English. It is wonderful how many variations you can play 
on the same tune, or the same theme, and the Orange Moun- 
tains offer the same facility for variation. 

The last long drive I took there was from the Country 
Club up Northfield avenue to Prospect avenue, about on the 
top of the hill, following the macadamized Northfield avenue 
at the curve, and not taking the old road to the left, which 
is a short cut, and so across. Prospect avenue was mac- 
adamized under the direction of the Park Commisioners, and 
leads across Mount Pleasant avenue to Eagle Rock avenue, 
and from there to Montclair. I turned down Eagle Rock 
avenue, passing Crystal Lake, a sheet of water right on the 
top of the mountain, and into Llewellyn Park. There is where 
I saw the rhododendrons just bursting into glory. There are 
three large groups of them in the park, besides many scat- 
tered ones, one shortly after you enter the park from Eagle 
Rock avenue, another near where the bridge crosses the 
Ramble or Ravine, and the third not far from the gate on 
the Valley road, where the purple beeches and the deciduous 
cypresses are. It is on the middle road that runs through the 
Ramble, with the old quarry wall covered, like the colosseum 
of Rome, with vegetation, grasses, mosses, lichens, vines, wild 
flowers, etc. The last time I had seen rhododendrons in their 
glory was last Summer at Bournemouth, in Hampshire, on the 
south coast of England, where there were hundreds, not to 
say thousands, of them lining the roads in every direction. 

After leaving the park at the Valley road I drove to Tory 
Corner, and so down Dodd street to the middle of Watsessing 
village, where there is another, an eighth, park, created by 
the Park Commissioners, which I was reminded I had omitted 
Vv'hen I wrote "All Seven at Last." It was formerly the 
grounds of the East Orange Disposal Works. I went to see it 
when it w-as first given over to the Commission, and it was a 
very unprepossessing field, covered with weeds and rubbish. 
Since then the engineers and landscape gardeners have been 



1 8 ©odne feetters 

working at it, and made it a thing of beauty, bright green 
emerald turf, roads and walks, flowers, shrubs, trees and seats, 
and all component parts of a park, small, but very pretty. 

"Revenons a nos moutons" and our "moutons" is always 
Branch Brook Park, that delectable spot which can never be 
visited too often. I spent an hour there on Saturday after- 
noon. The wind was fresh from the east, but the sky over- 
head was clear, though a haze obscured the Orange Moun- 
tains. The air was delightfully cool. The roses are coming 
into bloom. The syringas, which always carry me back to 
the old parsonage garden at Burlington, emit that sweet 
odor which has won for them the name of mock orange. 
Other shrubs, of which the collection in the park is so tine, 
are blossoming, but, above all, in two places, one on the 
right hand bank of the lake, where the boathouse is, and the 
other on the shore of Clark's pond, are daffodils, not enough 
of them, but enough to remind you of Wordsworth's im- 
mortal poem about them. He and his wife and his sister 
Dorothy were walking— the writer from whom I quote, Rawns- 
ley, in his "Literary Associations of the English Lakes," says 
just ninety years ago — on the shores of Ullswater, and 
Dorothy in her diary speaks of the daffodils they saw. She 
says there were more and yet more as we went along, and, 
at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was 
a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a 
country turnpike road. She never saw daffodils so beautiful 
as they danced in the wind. The sight inspired the poet, 
who wrote : 

"I wandered lonely as a cloud. 

That floats on high o'er vales and hills. 

When all at once I saw a crowd, 
A host, of golden daffodils; 

Beside the lake, beneath the trees. 

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 
******* 

The waves beside them danced; but they 

Outdid the sparkling waves in glee. 
A poet could not but be gay 

In such a jocund company. 
I gazed and gazed, but little thought 
What wealth the show to me had brought. 



©oane i^dUxz 19 

"For oft, when on my couch I lie. 

In vacant or in pensive mood. 
They flash upon that inward eye 
Which is the bliss of solitude, 
And then my heart with pleasure fills. 
And dances with the daffodils/' 
Was there ever an3rthing in the whole range of poetry more 
perfect than that? The daffodils used to be on a bank in the 
upper part of the park. The gardener has done well to put 
them by the water, where they flourish and belong. 

The botanical name of the daff'odil is narcissus. Shake- 
speare speaks of them in "The Winter's Tale" as 

" daffodils 

That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty." 

Last Summer, when I was in Edinburgh looking at the 
Raeburn pictures, I was introduced to the advantage of long 
distance spectacles. A person, who was also looking at them, 
heard me say I could not see them very distinctly, and lent 
me a pair of these spectacles, through which I could see them 
perfectly. I got a pair in London, and use them not only to 
look at pictures, but at scenery, which they bring out to a 
marked degree. 

Games, baseball, cricket, several sets, were going on in the 
middle division on the fine sward, and at the end of the north- 
ern division, on a beautiful lawn, several lawn tennis courts 
were set up, the balls were flying, and the young people of 
both sexes were not only enjoying themselves, but invigorat- 
ing themselves in the open air. There is a practical side to all 
this, for did not Wellington say that the battle of Waterloo 
was won in the playing fields of Eton? G. H. DOANE. 

Newark, June i, 1902. 



H System of parfiwaps 



I notice there is now an agitation going on about park- 
ways. I only represent myself, and have no idea what the 
Park Commissioners intend doing, but it seems to me it 
would be better first to finish the parks, which are in many 
respects incomplete, and then undertake a complete system 
of parkv.-ays. We do not want a parkway here and a park- 



20 ©oane feeftere 

way there, but parkways connecting all the parks, of which 
they are an extension, as they do in Boston. There you 
enter one as soon as you leave the southwest end of the 
city, and go to all the suburban parks, one after the other, 
over a beautiful road with strips of grass dividing the drive- 
way from the footpath on either side; more grass beyond, 
and trees and shrubs and flowers. Rome was not built in 
a day, and if we are patient and give the Commissioners, by 
degrees, the necessary funds, we shall have parks and park- 
ways to enjoy and be proud of. 

Since I have been writing this evening it seems to me 
that there is a great difference in the quiet between this 
Sunday and last. An epidemic of noise seemed to be raging 
all over the town, with the firing of pistols and cannon, 
giant crackers, elephant torpedoes and other instruments 
of torture to the human ear and nerves. The same state of 
things seems to have prevailed in New York, judging from 
a desnairing article a few days ago in the Tribune, of that 
city, entitled "The Cursed Cracker." I tnink we may thank 
the police for the change, as their attention was called to it. 
Those who make this disturbance are violating a city ordi- 
nance, and liable to fine and imprisonment. Personal re- 
monstrance seems of no avail, as, if you object, they answer 
by firing a cracker or torpedo in your face. The police have 
evidently turned their attention to the matter, and if their 
remonstrances fail, the bellinq- of one or two "cats," and its 
being publicly known, would produce the desired effect. 

G. H. DOANE. 

Newark, June 22, 1902. 



IRo place for tbe H>ispensarg 



At the risk of being regarded as a Thersites, or common 
scold, whenever I hear of a grievance I come to j'ou with it. 
They say if you want anything done, or undone, all you 
have to do is to write to the Sunday Call. In England, when 
it is necessary to call public attention to anything, you write 
to the Times. 

I heard the other day that, as the public dispensary is over 
the market, during the prevalence of smallpox persons who 
were afflicted with the disease would go there to find out 
what was the matter with them, and when the diagnosis 
was made, and it was discovered they had smallpox, they 



©octne SlzHcxb 21 

would be accompanied down the stairs, and across the street 
to the wagon, to be taken to the isolation hospital, by at- 
tendants who would wave their hands, and shoo the people 
away who were passing by. 

Now, if it is so, this should not be; to expose the whole 
community (for the market is a common centre) to the 
danger of contagion to save what it might cost to pro- 
vide a proper and separate building for the office of the 
Overseer of the Poor, and the dispensary. It might have 
done in the day of small things to huddle the market and 
them together; but in these days, when Newark has become 
a giant, with county and city buildings being erected on a 
large scale, with the splendid Prudential group of buildings, 
amalgamated banks and trust companies, and insurance 
companies and savings banks with millions of money at 
their command, it is high time that in a city like this proper 
and separate provision should be made for the work of the 
Overseer of the Poor and the dispensary. 

The dispensary is a most useful institution and does a 
great work. It is useful not only to the individual, but to 
the whole community, as, in connection with the Board of 
Health, of which it is, I believe, a branch, it prevents the 
spread of disease, applies the ounce of prevention, which is 
better than the pound of cure. A great improvement has 
been recently made in providing large and commodious 
quarters for the Board of Health, whose former quarters 
were inconvenient and cramped. Let it be followed up by 
taking the office of the Overseer of the Poor and the dis- 
pensary away from the public market, where they are gro- 
tesquely incongruous, and giving them a proper place in 
which to look after the poor and aged and suffering of the 
city. 

While speaking of public departments, I might refer to 
the Fire Department and the Salvage Corps, for their work 
on the Fourth of July. I heard their gongs and bells going 
all day and on into the night, and saw the horses and ma- 
chines rushing by, and could not but notice and admire their 
alertness, vigilance and fidelity. There must have been a 
tired lot of men and horses in the engine houses and stables 
that night, but they saved the city, and did their work well. 

To turn to a more agreeable subject. Your notice of sun 
dials reminded me of a most interesting one which I saw- 
just about a year ago in the garden at Abbotsford, where, 
thanks to the owner, whom I have the pleasure of knowing, I 



22 ©oane feettere 

had the entree. Mr. David Douglas, the pubHsher in Edin- 
burgh, told me that he found the old sun dial in an out-of-the- 
way place on the grounds, as it had fallen down and been 
taken away. It was replaced by the present owner, grand- 
daughter of Lockhart and great granddaughter of Sir Walter 
Scott. When he published the journal of Sir Walter Scott 
in two volumes he asked Sir ueorge Reid, president of the 
Royal Scottish Academy, whom I met at his house, to make 
two vignettes of the sun dial for the book. His idea 
was to have the sun dial represented standing erect in one 
volume, before misfortune overtook the owner, and pros- 
trate in the second, after the blow had fallen. Sir 
George Reid, a true artist and charming man, said noj 
he would have the sun dial, in the first volume standing in 
the sunlight, surrounded by grass and leaves and flowers ; in 
the other, in the gloom of night, with branches stripped of 
their leaves and exposed to the wintry blast. 

This is the sun dial of which Lockhart speaks in his life of 
Sir Walter in following wise : "Sir Walter had been visiting 
at Milton-Lockhart, and had met there an old friend whom 
he had not seen for many years and who, like himself, was 
suffering from the infirmities of age. The next morning he 
heard that the friend had had a paralj^ic seizure in the night, 
and that his life was despaired of. 'Immediately,' to quote 
the author's words, 'although he had intended to remain two 
days, Sir Walter drew my brother aside and besought him to 
lend him horses as far as Lanark, for that he must set off 
with the least possible delay. He would listen to no 
persuasions. No, William, he said; this is a sad warn- 
ing. I must home to work while it is called day; for 
the night cometh when no man can work. I put that text 
many a year ago, on my dial stone; but it often preached 
in vain." In a note it is stated, "This dial, which used to 
stand in front of the old cottage, and is now in the centre of 
the garden at Abbotsford, is inscribed "Nux gar erketai." In 
Greek these words mean, "The night cometh." 

There is another sun dial I have heard of, and I have never 
been able to find out where it is, which bears a Latin inscrip- 
tion, "Horas non numero, nisi serenas," I only number the 
shining hours. G. H. DOANE. 

Newark, July 6, 1902. 



®0(Xne Setters 23 



1Robin*1Ret>breast 



What a delightful bird the robin is ! I suppose our interest 
in him dates from nursery days, when we read, or were read 
to, about the compassion of the robins for the babes in the 
wood when they covered them with leaves. Our robin is not 
the same as the English robin-redbreast, which is a much 
smaller bird, being about half the size. This is the bird of 
which Wordsworth so sweetly speaks when he says : 
''Art thou the bird that Man loves best, 
The pious bird with the scarlet breast, 
Our little English robin?" 

The "pious" no doubt refers to the tradition associating the 
color on the robin's breast with the Passion of our Lord. 

The ornithologists say that ours belongs to the thrush 
family. 

There are two who come to this garden every year, and 
only two, and their coming is hailed with delight as the har- 
bingers of Spring. It is the talk of the house on the day they 
appear that the robins have come again. It is pretty to watch 
them as they hop, or rather run, across the grass, standing 
up so erect, and acting as if they were the masters of all they 
surveyed. One almost feels as if they were tenants-in-com- 
mon. They have a nest in a maple tree right alongside the 
porch, and this year they have raised two broods. It is inter- 
esting to sit and watch them repairing the nest, and when 
the eggs are laid and the incubation is going on, to watch 
the way in which the patient mother bird sits day after day 
and night after night, until -the little ones are hatched, and 
then to see the process of feeding going on, the little mouths 
wide open, and constantly filled by the solicitous parents. It 
is not only the early bird that catches the worm, but these 
robins seem to be catching worms all day long, from "morn 
to dewy eve." The other day one of the little robins fell out 
of the nest on to the ground, and you would almost think 
it was a human mother lamenting the accident to her child. 
The poor mother bird went flying about in every direction, and 
her cries, almost screams and groans, were pitiful to hear. 
The little robin got into the hedge, and now the supplies are 
going on in both places. 

What a wonderful thing instinct is ! It is instinct that 



24 ©octne i^cUttB 

brings those birds here year after year, prompts them to mate, 
build their nest, and take the wonderful care of their progeny 
that they do. As I watch them from the porch I can not but 
think of the beautiful example they set to human parents. 
In some instances instinct seems to work better than reason, 
and produce better results. 

The robins seem to have the same bump of locality as the 
storks who, in Holland, and some parts of Germany, return 
to their nests by the chimneys of houses every year. The 
storks seem to have the bump of time, too, for they return 
every year on the same day, June 24, the Feast of the Nativity 
of St. John the Baptist. The migration of birds is one of the 
wonders of nature. The way they come in the Spring and go 
in the Autumn, flying miles and miles over sea and land in 
pursuit, apparently, of climate ; the unerring way in which they 
direct their flight, as if there were compasses and charts in 
their brains to guide and direct them, is simply marvelous. 

Take the case of these particular robins. They go away 
when the time comes, and come back not only to this countrj^ 
and this State, and this town, but to this particular house, 35 
Bleecker street, which is their Summer home, and they do 
this with unerring certainty year in and year out. 

The whole thing brings back to one's mind what is perhaps 
the most beautiful of American poems, if not of poems in the 
English language, Bryant's poem "To a Waterfowl": 

Whither, 'midst falling dew, 

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day. 

Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 
Thy solitary way ! 

Vainly the fowler's eye 

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong. 
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky. 

Thy figure floats along. 

Seek'st thou the plashy brink 

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 

On the chafed ocean's side? 

There is a power whose care 

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast- — 
The desert and illimitable air — 

Lone wandering, but not lost. 




(WlonBigtior (Beorgc Wf. ©oa«e 

From a photograph taken in 1866 



®o<Jine Settera 25 

All day thy wings have fanned, 

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere. 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 

Though the dark night is near. 

And soon that toil shall end ; 

Soon shalt thou find a Summer home and rest. 
And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall bend. 

Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. 

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart, 

Deeply, hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
And shall not soon depart. 

He, who, from zone to zone, 

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 

Will lead my steps aright. 

G. H. DOANE. 
Newark, July lo, 1902. 



1ban&8ome Ifs Ubat 1ban&some Does" 



I have heard people criticising the addition to the Post 
Office building, which has been under construction for some 
time, as an excrescence displeasing to the eye. Congruity is 
the foundation of good taste, and that thing is in good taste 
which answers its purpose, and that this addition eminently 
does. Yesterday I went through it, and it seemed like an 
Arabian Night's Dream — ideal is the only word for it. What 
was needed was floor space, and that is most abundantly sup- 
plied. Room, light and air were the three desiderata, and 
they are provided. More stories would have been of little 
use, as the upper rooms in the present building are vacant. 
As I came away, and thought of the black hole, the old Post 
Office, which this has supplanted, I could not help rejoicing 
when I looked back at the movement, and the meeting, and 
the letter in your columns which led to this vast improve- 
ment. When it is finished I do not believe there will be a 
better Post Office in the wide world than this. 

I w-as glad to receive the Sunday Call in London during 



26 ©oane EettetB 

my recent absence, for I like to keep in touch with Newark 
when away from it. Sad changes occurred during those few 
weeks, leaving great vacancies in the ranks of friends, notably 
those caused by the deaths of Eugene Vanderpool, Samuel C. 
Howell and Michael A. Mullin, all warm friends of long stand- 
ing. The parks in recent years drew Mr. Vanderpool and me 
closely together. I never published a letter in your columns 
about the parks but I was sure to receive at once a warm 
and appreciative acknowledgment. If I had any suggestions 
to make he would listen to them and carry them out, and 
invite more. Day before yesterday when I drove into Branch 
Brook Park, and caught sight of the fountain in the reservoir, 
which adds the poetry of motion, of moving, sparkling water, 
to the beauty of the place, I remembered speaking to him about 
it when I first noticed it. That remains, but he is gone. As 
the old monk said, "We are the shadows; they are the sub- 
stances." Almost the last thing he said to me before I went 
away was, "We have postponed the annual inspection of the 
parks till September, and you will be back to go with us." 

Samuel C. Howell represented a name that stands high 
among those who laid the foundations of the prosperity of 
Newark, for his father was one of the great captains of in- 
dustry. He was a good citizen, but with no turn for public 
life. His home, his business, filled up his life, and how wel- 
come his friends were to his hospitable hearth. Mr. Van- 
derpool and he were two of those who helped me most 
promptly and most generously in providing the funds for the 
improvements in the Public Library. Both these men will be 
long missed. The same may be said by those who knew him 
of Michael A. Mullin, who also died while I was away. No 
more genial or tender-hearted man than he ever lived, and no 
stauncher friend. His cheery disposition carried him and 
everybody who knew him along through sunshine and shade, 
and his death was a veritable sorrow, not only to his immediate 
family, but to the countless friends who valued and loved him, 
to no one more than to me. 

As a rule I avoid the "personal equation," but there have 
been so many kind inquiries about my health since my return, 
a month sooner than I expected, that I take advantage of this 
opportunity to say a word on the subject. People ask me, how 
I am, and it is a hard question to answer. All I know is that 
"I am not myself at all." Pius IX. of happy memory said to 
me once: "Senectus ipse est morbus" fold age is a disease of 
itself). He had found it out then; I have found it out now. 



®o<ine B^dUxB 27 

I am suffering from one of the Protean symptoms of advanc- 
ing years. It has been coming on a long time, and every day 
I feel less and less well, though there seems to be no organic 
trouble. My old friend, Fr. Fulton, when he was failing, 
used to say to people who asked him how he was, "No better, 
thank you." I can say the same. It may be the "gradual 
drawing of the dusky veil." I can still do more or less, but 
am cut off from much that I could do, and loved to do. 
Whether it will ever come back remains to be seen. An old 
friend of mine, a great civil engineer in London, whom I found 
older and more infirm than when I left him two years ago, 
said to me the other day: "I used to put 400 days into the 
year ; now I put 300." I can say the same, and thank God 
for it, but, whatever more I may see, I am proud and glad to 
have lived long enough to see Newark develop into the great 
city it has, and promising to advance still more in beauty and 
prosperity. Floreat Novarce ! (May Newark flourish.) 
Newark, August 12, 1903. G. H. DOANE. 



®Y>er tbe Xlbtarp 2)oor 



People ask me when the bronze panel over the door of 
the public Library is to be put in place. I tell them I do 
not know, and cannot find out, though I constantly inquire. 
"The law's delay" is proverbial, but it is nothing to artistic 
delay. I am told that they had to wait two years in New 
York for St. Gaudens's statue of General Sherman. I hope 
we are not to have a similar experience here. 

We are trying to arrange an art exhibition in the assembly 
room of the library for late Autumn or early Winter. 

G. H. DOANE. 

Newark, Oct. 13, 1903. 

iflowers at B^ancb asrooft parft 



The greenhouses at Branch Brook Park serve a double 
purpose. Not only do they serve as a nursery and starting 
place for the Spring and Summer flowers and bedding plants 
which are transplanted to the beds all over the grounds, 
but in the Autumn they are filled with the blooms that wind 
up the year's floral display. 



28 ©oane feefter0 

In about a week they will be well worth visiting, and 
should be seen by all who love flowers. 

There are three of them. The middle one is filled with 
bedding plants. The first and third, specially the latter, 
have their benches covered with plants arranged most sys- 
tematically and beautifully. In the third house a bright, 
variegated vine is trained and drooped in hanging folds 
around the middle bench. The gardener tells me that it is 
the vinca variegata. Then on that bench comes a line of 
bright green leaves, the salaginella ermenilliana, then rows 
of fuchsias, begonias, salvias, ericas, ciperus quadrifolia, 
myrta salicifolia, ageratum, dracaena, asparagus, geraniums, 
etc., red, pink, blue, green, gray and white, a floral prism 
resolved into its colors that leads up to the royal chrysan- 
themums, which tower above the whole; they, like court- 
iers, grouped around a throne. 

The chrysanthemums are very numerous and very varied, 
and of many colors, shapes and forms, some Japanese, some 
Chinese. 

The ones on the side in the third house have been pinched 
down to show only a single flower, which is only a little 
over a foot from the ground. 

The rest of the park is well worth seeing now, as the 
grass is as green as in the early Spring, and the leaves on 
the trees are turning before they fall: "Blessings brighten 
as they take their flight." 

One great improvement has been made this year, and that 
is in connecting the two parallel roads at the end of the third 
section, so that there is now, barring Fifth and Bloomfield 
avenues, a continuous drive from one end of the park to the 
other. When the subways are completed the drive will be 
continuous. The engineers must have done their work well, 
as all the surplus water pictured in your pages on Sunday 
morning was gone on Sunday afternoon. 

There is no more beautiful pleasure ground in the world than 
Branch Brook Park, even as it is at present, with its roads, 
turf, flowers, trees, shrubbery, lake and waterways, and the 
Orange Mountains in the distance. They always remind me 
of the Alban and the Sabine hills as seen across the Cam- 
pagna at Rome. What will it not be when the improvements 
now about to be commenced are completed? 
Newark Oct. 13, 1903. G. H. DOANE. 



©ocine i^titcxB 29 



**xrbe Bpes 1bave Ht" 



The hopes and wishes expressed in my letter of last Sun- 
day have been realized by the vote "for" the proposed laws 
in favor of the Parks, and the wisdom, good sense and 
taste of the majority of the voters of Essex County have 
been manifested by their action. Having put their hand to 
the plough, they have not turned back; having started to 
build a tower, they have provided the wherewithal to finish 
it! No one can say of them: "This man began to build 
and was not able to finish." In doing so, they have not 
only made possible the completion of the parks, but they 
have passed a deserved vote of thanks to, and confidence in, 
the capable and efificient Board of Park Commissioners, who 
have done their work so faithfully and well. The parks 
"have tongues," and cry aloud to them and their subordi- 
nates: "All hail! All hail!" 

Just now the beauty of Autumn is upon the parks, the 
"pathos of Autumn," as Alfred Austin calls it in his "Haunts 
of Ancient Peace." The lovely Autumn leaves decorate the 
trees, which are soon to be left bare, like the dying rays of 
many colors that illuminate the sky as the God of Day 
nightly sinks to his rest. 

The way in which the people's gardens are kept com- 
mands my admiration every time I visit them. A week's 
neglect would show itself, but the rake is kept at work, 
roads and paths are always smooth and clean, and there is 
no "Royal Pleasance" better looked after than the parks of 
Essex County, and now not only will they be finished, but 
provision for their care and keeping up is made in per- 
petuity. 

Every one who can should visit the greenhouses within 
the next few days to see the superb show of chrysanthe- 
mums that now, to use an expression of Sydney Smith's, 
"glorifies" them. The show is singularly well arranged, 
for there is a border of smaller plants on the sides, lantana, 
acharantus, begonia, ageratum, etc., which form a beautiful 
fringe, and has a singular effect of breaking the monotony 
of only the show of the larger flowers. I have never seen 
this border effect in any show before, and it reflects credit 
on the ingenuity and taste of the gardener, Mr. Cauda. 



30 ©ocine iLtitttB 

The blooms are splendid, and of great variety of color, and 
there are some plants trained in pretty designs. 

In London, when the chrysanthemums are shown in the 
Temple Gardens, it is the talk of the town, and all London 
flocks to see them. There payment is required for admis- 
sion; here, every one is admitted free. They will only last a 
few days longer, and every one v/ho can should make a 
point of seeing them. The beds outside are filled with 
pansies, very large and in infinite variety of color. 

In my last letter I said I was trying to raise some money 
among a few friends to complete the big stone over the 
Public Library door, and to put an electric installation in 
the art gallery. The response to my letters to them have 
been most gratifying, and I shall be able to report to the 
trustees of the Public Library at their meeting to-morrow 
evening that the money ($2,500) is all subscribed, and mostly 
all paid in, in sums of $100, and that they can now proceed 
with these two great improvements. I trust they will place 
the work on the stone in the hands of our Newark artist, 
Mr. John Flanagan, and that thus his first commission after 
his long sojourn abroad will come from his native city. 

I was once told by one who knew me well that I had the 
lust of finishing, because, she thought — it was my dear sister 
— that when once I began a thing, I could never rest until 
it was done. Very likely this is showing itself now in regard 
to parks and library. It is a great thing to begin. "Dimi- 
dium habet qui incipit," "He has half who has begun," the 
Latins say. But only half, and it is a greater thing to finish, 
to stick to a thing through thick and thin; not to give it up 
nor be discouraged; to persevere, to overcome obstacles; 
and never let go until the keystone is in the arch, until the 
end crowns the work. G. H. DOANE. 

Newark, Nov. 5, 1902. 



Sir 3fret)ericft Bramwell 



I have known a great many delightful men in the course 
of my life, but never one more so than he whose name stands 
at the head of this letter, the news of whose death, in his 
eighty-fifth year, in London on November 30, reached me first 
by cablegram, and then by the newspapers which have arrived 
since. My first acquaintance with him was a casual one, and 
began in a railway carriage in Switzerland. It was an ac- 



©oane feettew 31 

quaintance that ripened at once into friendship. The next 
time I saw him was in Rome, and curiously enough when I 
was raising the big leather curtain to go into St. Peter's he 
was pushing it on the other side, and we exchanged saluta- 
tions. He had been to Malta to examine into the cause of the 
explosion of the guns of the Thunderer, was staying with his 
daughters at the Hotel Costanzi, where I saw them, and he 
showed me his diagrams and gave me his explanation of the 
disaster. After that whenever I went to England I was sure 
to see more or less of him, and one of my chiefest pleasures in 
going there, and one of the things I specially looked forward to 
was the meeting him. I have never been able to tell whether 
it was to him or to Sir Seymour Haden that I was indebted 
for my honarary membership on several occasions in the 
Athenaeum Club. When I have been in London he was al- 
ways looking about to see what he could do for me. He gave 
me a ticket for the opening of the Tower Bridge, brought mc 
to the Royal Institution, where I heard Lord Kelvin and 
Marconi lecture ; to the conversaziones of the Royal Society, 
where I met Lord Lister and others ; to a dinner in the Gold- 
smiths' Hall, etc., etc. Once he came to see me here, and I 
went over the Edison works with him. I never knew a 
greater observer than he, or one whose thirst for knowledge 
was greater. On his way to this house he passed the inclined 
plane of the canal, and before he prosecuted his journey he 
went up to the head and inquired about it from the man in 
charge, and afterwards showed me at the Brevoort House, 
in New York, when I went to call on him, a plan he had made 
of it. He had never seen one like it before. I asked him how 
he liked the Brevoort House, and he told me very well all but 
the "quart d'heure de Rabelais," referring to Rabelais's un- 
happy quarter of an hour at the Hotel Dessin, in Calais, when 
the landlord presented his big bill, and had gone for the 
sergent de ville because he had not money to pay it. 

At the dinner at Goldsmiths' Hall I lost my identity, as my 
dinner card was "Sir Frederick Bramwell's guest." However, 
the prime warden, after the butler had said, "Gentlemen, 
charge your glasses, silence for the prime warden," called upon 
me to reply to the toast of the visitors. One of the things I 
remember I said was that some time before Sir Frederick, who 
had known me first, met my brother, and was introduced to 
him as the Bishop of Albany. He did not know his family 
name, and asked him, "By the way, my lord, do you happen to 
know Monsignor Doane in America," to which my brother 



32 ®oane feetterB 

replied, "I ought to know him, he is my brother." As we 
were coming away he pointed out great stacks of bonbon 
boxes, and asked me if I knew what they were. When I re- 
plied in the negative he said they were hush boxes. "Hush 
boxes," I said; "what does that mean?" "Why," he said, 
"when the husbands go home late from the dinners and the 
wives begin to scold they say, 'Now, my dear, do not say any- 
thing. See the box I have brought home to you,' and then 
there is no more about it." 

I remember one delightful afternoon I spent with him, one 
of many. I had met him at dinner at a friend's house in 
Queen's Gate the evening before, where he sat opposite to me. 
Hearing me say that that day I had been to see the Tower 
Bridge, and the next day I was going to see the electric rail- 
way under the Thames, he modestly asked me if 1 would take 
him. Of course, I was delighted with the proposal, and nat- 
urally it was he who took me. We lunched together at the 
Athenaium Club. I was between him and another delightful 
friend and companion, Sir Seymour Haden. Changing the 
hour from night to day, it was a "nox coenaque deorum." 
After luncheon we started in a hansom cab, and I never 
shall forget his running commentary as we went along. First 
he told me that we should sit not straight across, but slightly 
towards each other, as it would make more room. Then he 
told me of a project on foot of building a tunnel longi- 
tudinally under the Thames to connect Waterloo, on the 
Surrey side, with the City, as it was cheaper to do that than 
to build above. Then he pointed out ropes that looked like 
tails of kites on the other side of the river, and said they 
carried frozen carcases of sheep from Australia being hoisted 
up into storage warehouses, 70,000 of them coming in a single 
cargo. And so we drove along, he pointing out something 
interesting all the time until we came to the lift, or elevator, 
as we would call it, a round one, one half going down as the 
other half came up, which took us down to the station of the 
electric train. We went under the Thames, and to Southwell, 
where we inspected the electric works. When we had finished 
he said, "Shall we go back as we came or by cab?" "By 
cab," I said, and I was glad I had made the choice, as there 
was another flood of reminiscences. Just then Professor 
Dewar, at the Royal Institution, had been solidifying hydro- 
gen, at great expense and with some danger, and I said, 
"Cui bono?" (What's the use?) He fairly turned on me and 
said I was the last person from whom he would expect such 



®o<xne feetterc 33 

a question. The same thing was asked a hundred and fifty 
years before, when the two ItaHans put pieces of copper wire 
to the legs of a frog, and see what has come of that. Later 
in the day we called on Professor Dewar, saw the apparatus, 
had afternoon tea with him, but I did not repeat my question. 
Another thing he told me was that when photography was 
first discovered someone said it would be a foe-to-graphic 
art! 

One of the things we did that afternoon was to call on my 
niece, who lived in Montagu Square. As we were coming 
away the maid, who knew me and wanted to see whom I 
was with, went on the balcony over the front door and heard 
the cabby say as he saw us two big men approaching, "What 
do they take my cab for? Do they take it for a weighing- 
machine?" Another was to call at his daughter's. Lady Hors- 
ley's, in Cavendish Square. It was the first time I had made 
a call in that locality, and I was reminded of a verse in a 
book entitled "Original Poems by Jane and Ann Taylor," 
which I had heard as a boy: 

"Little Anne and her mother were Avalking one day 
In London's wide streets so fair, 
When business obliged them to go by the way 
That led them through Cavendish Square." 

I repeated it for them, and, finding to my surprise that 
they had never heard it before, sent them a copy of the book. 
There are many such things that they have lost in England 
that we retain here. 

On another occasion when I had been in Edinburgh I told 
him that I had visited Mr. Blackwood in George street, with 
a letter of introduction from Mr. Story, just as I had visited 
Mr. John Murray, 3d, with a letter from Mr. William E. Dar- 
win. I had not only seen the saloon where the portraits of the 
authors hang, just as they do in Mr. Murray's house in Lon- 
don, but had been taken into the sanctum, the editorial room. 
Quick as a wink, with a merry twinkle in his eye which I 
did not notice at the time, he said : "Did he show you the 
sppper service used in the Noctes Ambroisianse ?" I was 
taken oflf my guard, regretting the fact that I was 400 miles 
away and had missed that, when no doubt it was in the 
cupboard in the room. I looked up and saw by his expression 
that he was quizzing me, and remembered that the supper 
service was as fictitious as the "noctes" themselves. 

Many are the delightful stories told of him and by him. 
It was forever when you were in his company "quips and 



34 ®odne £etter« 

cranks and wanton wiles, nods and becks and wreathed 
smiles." Once he told me in his early days a barrister came to 
him for an opinion as an engineer. When he got it he asked 
his fee, and was told five guineas. Some time after, when 
Mr. Bramwell had become an F. R. S., he went for another 
opinion, and offered another five guineas. Mr. Bramwell 
asked him if he knew what F. R. S. meant. He said, "Yes, 
Fellow of the Royal Society." "Yes," he said; "it also 
means fees raised since !" 

He had a speech to make at a bicentenary dinner in Cam- 
bridge. His toast was "Applied Science." It was very late 
when his turn came to speak, and, rising, he said that the only 
thing that occurred to him in connection with applied science 
at that hour of the night was the taking of a match, striking 
it and applying it to a bedroom candle, and sat down. Mr. 
James Russell Lowell, who sat opposite to him, took a piece 
of paper and wrote on it, "O ! brief Sir Frederick, would that 
all might catch thy happy science, and apply the match." 

The subject of his address at Bath in 1888, the year that 
he was president of the British Association, was "Next to 
Nothings," and most ingenious and interesting it was, show- 
ing the many instances in nature of the great influence often 
times exerted by the slightest and most insignificant things. 

Sir Frederick Bramwell was what the Greeks would have 
called a king of men. He towered above his fellows physi- 
cally and intellectually. I never saw a finer head on any 
shoulders, with its shock of snow white hair, or a more 
benignant and intellectual face. A smile was perpetually play- 
ing upon his features. The London Times of December i 
devotes two columns to his memory. His colleagues at all 
his societies and clubs speak of him with admiration and re- 
gret. His loss to his friends is irreparable, and what it is to 
his devoted wife and daughters no tongue can tell. I have been 
dreading the news of his death ever since I parted with him 
in London five months ago, for it was evident he was failing 
then. At least he has left his beautiful example of devotion 
to duty, of thirst for knowledge, of companionship, happy him- 
self and striving to make others happy, and his memory will 
be kept green so long as anyone is left to look back to the 
delightful hours spent in his company. G. H. DOANE. 

Newark, Dec. 17, 1903. 



©odne Eettere 35 

*'Zbc Hrt preservative of Bll Brts" 



This epigrammatic expression occurred to me the other 
day when I went to see the exhibition illustrative of 
printing recently arranged by Mr. Dana and his able 
assistants in the old Reference Room of the Public Library. 
It refers to printing, and comes, as Bartlett tells us, from 
the inscription upon the facade of the house at Haarlem 
formerlv occupied by Laurent Koster (or Coster), who is 
charged, among others, with the invention of printing. 
Mention is made of this inscription about 1628. "Memoria 
Sacrum Typographia Ars Artium Omnium Conservatrix. 
Hie Primum Inventa Circa Annum MCCCCXL" — which 
renders sacred to memory the spot where, according to the 
writer, typography, the art conservative, or preservative, 
of all arts, was invented about the year 1440. Of course, the 
invention is generally now conceded to Faust and Guten- 
berg. 

All lovers of books, and every one either is, or should be, 
a lover of books, will be repaid by a visit to this very inter- 
esting exhibition. It should not be neglected, as was the 
beautiful show of posters which adorned the walls of the 
exhibition room a short while ago. Last year we had two 
splendid gatherings of pictures in that room, but they were 
pictures beyond the reach of all but those of ample means, 
the rich man's gallery. The poster and chromo lithograph 
exhibition was the poor man's gallery. They were very 
decorative, very reasonable in price, very beautiful and in 
perfect taste, and yet, though the show was advertised in 
the newspapers, very few took the trouble to go to see it. 
The arrangement cost the librarian and those who help him 
a great deal of work and trouble, and a few profited by it. 
They might have made their own the complaint of those 
who said in old time: "We have piped unto you, and you 
have not danced." 

Perhaps if we wanted to realize the advantage that print- 
ing has brought to us we may imagine a world without it, 
and we, living in it, without books. The only thing that we 
could compare it to would be a world without sun, moon or 
stars. Of course, we might have manuscripts, but they 
would be only for the learned few, and the few who had 



36 ©oane feetfere 

money to afford such luxuries. Some of the choicest treas- 
ures of literature have been preserved to us in this way, 
but now the one copy has been multiplied into millions, and 
where one could read, now the multitude can. To printing 
we owe the Republic of Letters. "Littera Scripta Manet," 
the written (even more, the printed) word remains; "flying 
words," in talk or speech, are lost in air. 

Perhaps I may be allowed to quote here what I wrote 
about printing in the address delivered at the opening of 
the Public Library, March 14th, 1901, the result of a little 
study I made at the time. Many have never seen it be- 
fore, and those who have seen it no doubt have, long ago, 
forgotten it. 

The invention of printing and the use of paper made a 
vast revolution in the publication of books. Printing is de- 
fined to be the art of multiplying books by means of single 
types, capable of being used again and again in different 
combinations for the printing of different books. Printing 
seems to have originated in China from engraved wooden 
plates in A. D. 593. Block printing was the first printing 
used, about 1423, and it produced images of saints and 
objects of piety, animals, etc. A block book is a book 
printed from carved blocks of wood. They gave the idea 
to the inventor of movable type. About 100 block books 
are said to exist, among them the Ars Moriendi, the Biblia 
Pauperum, the Apocalypse and the Canticum Canticorum. 
The earliest specimen of printing from movable type known 
to exist was printed at Mainz, or Mayence, in 1454. Koster, 
Schafer, Gutenberg and Faust divide between themselves tue 
honor of having invented printing. The same was the case 
in the invention of ether, which Morton and Jackson both 
claimed. A statue was erected to the inventor of ether on 
the Common, and when asked to whom the statue was 
erected a Boston wag replied e(i)ther. 

What would these early printers say if they were to see 
a linotype or Mergenthaler machine at work, making type, 
setting type, distributing type, with a keyboard like a piano? 
The latest invention for making type I saw described in 
The Mail, the tri-weekly edition of The London Times, 
while I was writing this paper. It is called the Wicks rotary 
type-casting machine. Before a machine would produce 
3,000 types an hour, of one letter only. This produces 60,000 
types an hour, and the whole alphabet in proper propor- 



©oane fi^dUtB 37 

tions. In a day it will cast 500,000 types. It would take a 
man 100 hours to distribute that quantity of type; so that 
it is cheaper to throw the types back into the big melting 
receiver with its half a ton of molten metal and make them 
over again. The result is that fresh type are used every 
day in The Times office, where the machine is at work, 
which are so much clearer than old ones used again. The 
article further states that there are a million types in the 
news columns of The Times every day. It reminded me of 
what I was told in London by a great civil engineer, Sir 
Frederick Bramwell, that they were to build a tunnel, and 
it has since been done, longitudinally under the Thames to 
connect Waterloo, on one side of the river, down the 
stream, with the city on the other, as it was cheaper to do 
that than to buy and build above. 

The first book printed at Mayence, about 1454, was the 
edition of the Vulgate, now known as the Mazarin Bible, 
because it was found in the library of Cardinal Mazarin. 
Twenty-four copies of this book are now known to exist, 
nineteen on paper, five on vellum. A copy printed on vellum 
was sold at the Perkins sale in London in 1873 for £3,400 
($17,000) to Lord Ashburnham; a copy on paper was sold 
at the same sale to Mr. Quaritch for £2,690 ($13,450). At 
the sale of Sir John Hayford Thorold's books, known as the 
Syston Park sale, in 1884, Mr. Quaritch paid £3,900 ($19,500) 
for a copy on paper. The next known printed book, the 
Codex Psalmorum, was printed on vellum by Schafer. in 
1457. Nine copies of this are known to exist, almost all 
in public libraries. A copy of this was sold at the same sale 
and was also bought by Mr. Quaritch for the highest price 
ever paid for a printed book, £4,950 ($24,750). I say printed, 
because a very short time ago Lord Ashburnham's Evan- 
gelia Quatiior, or Four Gospels, a MS. bound in a cover, 
enriched with precious stones, which had belonged to a 
monastery of nuns at Lindau on Lake Constance, and had 
been in his family for sixty years, was sold at private sale 
to an unknown purchaser, probably an American, by Messrs. 
Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge, in London, for £10,000 
($50,000), the largest price ever paid for a single volume. 

Well may Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, whom I have the pleasure 
of knowing, say in his interesting "Book Fancier," in the 
chapter on the Mazarin Bible: "It is surely with almost 
a feeling of awe and reverence," when thinking of the mill- 



38 ®oane fetters 

ions of books now existing, "that one calls up the earliest 
of the kind, the primeval Adam and Eve, the first or first 
known of all the books, the true Adam of all the millions 
of books that have followed." The first printed books, he 
also says, are about the noblest, grandest works ever issued 
from the press — vellum used, or paper like vellum, large, 
brilliant type, capitals rubricated and wrought by hand, 
other capitals illuminated in colors and golden miniatures 
with bindings to match; such were the glories of the first 
printed books. Their size was often two feet high. 

The first Polyglot Bible was in seven volumes and five 
languages— Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Syriac and Chaldaeic, 
and was printed by Plantin in Antwerp, in 1568. The tirst 
classic, Cicero, was printed in 1465. In the library of the 
British Museum there are 1,000 editions of Cicero. The 
first Greek book, Lascaris' Grammar, was printed in Milan 
in 1476. The first book printed in England, in 1474, by 
William Caxton, Westminster, was The Game and Play of 
Chess, moralized. 

I have several times spoken of Mr. Bernard Quaritch, the 
great book seller and book buyer. Once, when I was in 
London, I went to see him, and Mr. Charles Jamrach, nat- 
uralist (that was the sign over his door), the great dealer 
in wild animals, lions, tigers, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, etc., 
etc. Both were Germans, and yet when I spoke to Mr. 
Quaritch of Mr. Jamrach he said he had never heard of 
him, and when I spoke to Mr. Jamrach of Mr. Quaritch he 
never had heard of him 

Other books followed, mostly religious. Eighteen thou- 
sand volumes are said to have been printed before the close 
of the fifteenth century. Then came Aldus Pius Manutius, 
of Venice, with his beautiful Aldine editions, and the Elze- 
virs of Holland, in Leyden and Amsterdam. 

So printing spread through all the countries of the world. 
The first English printer was William Caxton. One of his 
books was the Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophers, 
printed in 1477. He was not only printer, but editor and 
translator. The first printer of Chaucer was Richard Pyn- 
son. But a truce to these historical details. 

So far the address. It was Mr. Morgan who bought the 
Quatuor Evangelia, and I have seen it in New York. The 
tunnel spoken of was not built. 

I speak only of the use, not of the abuse of printing, when 
any kind of bad book is printed. Alas, this fountain, con- 



©oane SLtitcxB 39 

trary to St. James's words, does send forth sweet and bitter 
water. "The abuse of a thing," however, as Sir PhiHp Syd- 
ney says, "does not make the right use odious." We must 
fly the f^oison, and use the food. 

Let us hope that the efiforts of the Public Library to 
benefit and instruct the citizens of Newark, to whom the 
beautiful building belongs, may not have been in vain, and 
that many will avail themselves of this golden opportunity 
of tracing printing from its fountain head down to the 
present day. G. H. DOANE. 

Newark, January 27, 1904. 



Bboriculture : Zxccs in tbe Streets 



A law passed by the Legislature last year provides that 
there may be appointed in all municipalities a commission 
of three freeholders, without compensation, who shall have 
control and power to plant and care for shade trees on any 
of the public highways. Notice is to be given when planting 
is contemplated, specifying streets, etc., and published in 
the newspapers. The cost of planting, including guards, 
is to be borne by the adjoining real estate, and is a lien, 
and mav be collected with the taxes. The cost of mainte- 
nance after planting is to be borne by the municipality. A 
previous law (1896) makes it unlawful to hitch or tie a horse 
to a tree or leave it unattended near one. Such a commis- 
sion has been appointed for Newark by the Mayor, and its 
members are three energetic citizens, Messrs. Bacheller, 
Titsworth and Berry, who are willing to undertake the work 
as a labor of love and as an opportunity for beautifying and 
improving the city. 

This is a step in the right direction, for it will secure the 
planting of many streets which are bare and shadeless with- 
out them, and secure uniformity in the planting. Of all the 
marvelous things with which God has covered the earth, 
besides grass and flowers, there is nothing more beautiful 
than a tree, and, besides its use for decorative purposes, 
how largely does it enter into our lives! A tree means 
wood, and what infinite uses are made of that, building 
houses and ships, burning in our fireplaces, turned into 
utensils, manufactured into paper, etc. 

This commission is a correlative of the Park Commission, 
and will do for our streets and highways what that has done 



40 ©oane EefterB 

for our ornamental grounds. The great charm of our New 
England villages is the glorious trees, mostly elms, that 
line their roads, and make in them beautiful avenues. In 
Summer they are of incomparable advantage, as they keep 
the hot and burning sun off streets and houses and make a 
"boundless contiguity of shade." 

In Washington, one of our most beautiful cities, where 
such a commission has been at work, some 87,000 trees have 
been planted, more by 7,000 than there are in Paris, where 
there are 80,000. There the commission has its own nur- 
series, which furnish its supplies, and great care is taken in 
planting to insure the growth and wellbeing of the tree. 
The average cost there of planting a tree on the street, 
boxed, staked and strapped, is $3. Ihe trees they plant are 
the American elm, linden and sycamore, the European syca- 
more, the Norway, silver and sugar maples, pin and red 
oaks, etc. 

The commission here is not a month old, having been ap- 
pointed on the 20th of January, as the Newark Shade Tree 
Commission. The members are very enthusiastic about 
their work, and are making arrangements to commence it 
as soon as the frost is out of the ground, and it will be 
watched with interest by all who love their town, as all good 
citizens should. 

In "The Heart of Midlothian" Sir Walter Scott makes 
the Laird of Dumbiedikes say to his son: "Jock, when ye 
hae naething else to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree; 
it will be growing, Jock, when ye're sleeping." In a note 
he says that he has learned that these words had so much 
weight with a Scottish Earl as to lead to his planting a 
large tract of country. We have some noble trees in New- 
ark, and we want more. One of the features of Boston, 
"mine own romantic town," are the splendid elms on the 
Common, whose branches reach across Beacon street al- 
most to the very houses. In Cambridge still survives the 
elm under which Washington took command of the Conti- 
nental army. What can be more beautiful than the chest- 
nuts and the ilexes of Italy, the oaks of England, the cork 
trees of Spain, the lindens of Germany? The great street of 
Berlin is named from its trees, "Unter den Linden" (under 
the lindens). 

I had often heard of the one tree, a plane tree, that survives 
in Cheapside, in London — John Gilpin's Cheapside — at the 
corner of Wood street, between St. Paul's and the Bank, 



©oane ^ztUrB 41 

and last Summer I went to see it. It is quite a flourishing 
tree, and, though only one, quite lights up the crowded 
stre<!t with its greenery. It is associated with some lovely 
lines of Wordsworth's, "The Reverie of Poor Susan," as no 
doubt the tree, as well as the thrush, took her out of London 
in her dream. They read as follows: 

"At the corner of Wood street, when daylight appears, 
Hangs a thrush that sings loud — it has sung for three years; 
Poor Susan has passed by the spot and has heard 
In the silence of morning the song of the bird. 

'Tis a note of enchantment. What ails her? She sees 
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees. 
Bright volumes of vapor through Lothbury glide. 
And a river flows on through the vale at Cheapside. 

Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale, 
Down which she so often has tripped with her pail; 
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's, 
The one only dwelling on earth that she loves. 

She looks and her heart is in heaven; but they fade — 
The mist and the river, the hill and the shade; 
The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise. 
And the colors have all passed away from her eyes." 
Newark, Feb. 17, 1904. G. H. DOANE. 



H S)av> in Boston 



A friend told me the other day that the time for the 
Whistler Memorial Exhibition, in Boston, had been ex- 
tended from last Sunday to next Sunday. It had not been 
convenient for me to go before, but I found I could be 
.iway from here yesterday without detriment to anything, 
and so I took the i o'clock Shore Line express from New 
York Tuesday afternoon and was in Boston at 6. I no- 
ticed in the big waiting room in the South Station a row of 
names of places on the wall opposite benches, and was told 
that they are trysting places where friends meet friends by 
appointment who belong to the same places, and they go 
home together. That was for me the latest Yankee notion. 
Another thing I noticed was a telephone in my room at the 



42 ©odne £etter0 

excellent Touraine, where I stopped. Not only all orders 
were sent to the office by it, but I spoke to a friend in the 
country by it, and could have talked as far as Omaha. 

Yesterday morning I went to Copley Hall, a shed on 
Clarendon street, which houses just now a priceless collec- 
tion of the works of art of one man, and that man James 
McNeill Whistler. His power and versatility are some- 
thing marvelous. Equally at home in oil, water, chalk, 
pencil, etching needle and on stone, you go from example 
to example admiring the work of the great genius and the 
generosity of the owners who have sent their treasures from 
England, from Scotland, from the far West, to contribute 
to the greatest collection of Whistler's works that has ever 
been made anywhere. As I said to a friend whom I met at 
the show yesterday, it ranges from nothing to everything, 
from scratches hardly visible to the naked eye to the most 
elaborately finished work in all the mediums. Whistler, after 
all, forms a class apart. He is a comet, not a fixed star. 
There never was any one like him before, not only for 
eccentricity, but for, in his way, most remarkable art. Com- 
parisons are always odious. Like must be compared with 
like. It is absurd to compare the bay of New York with the 
bay of Naples, as people often do, both beautiful, but both 
utterly unlike. No one ever did greater work than Whistler, 
but there have been many who nave done equally well in 
their own way, as, for example, my dear friend Sir Sey- 
mour Haden, whose etchings to me are equal to anything 
that the hand of man has ever done. I had the pleasure also 
of knowing his brother-in-law, whose work I have been to 
see, and I cherish a little card he sent me one day in Lon- 
don with a black border after the death of his wife, with 
his name, Mr. J. McNeill Whistler, no Rue du Bac, Cheyne 
Walk, Chelsea, and these words written on it: "Monsignor: 
I am only too delighted to do anything that shall please you 
now and always." 

The Copley Society have been rewarded for their enter- 
prise, as people have come from all over the country to see 
the exhibition. The walls are draped with grass cloth, which 
forms a most suitable background. 

From the Copley gallery I went to the Art Museum, 
where another most interesting exhibition is now on. It 
consists of the plates of Turner's exquisite landscapes in 
Liber Studiorum, of which he did nearly a hundred, and his 



©oane feettero 43 

illustrations to Rogers's Italy. My day was a full, but 
most enjoyable, one. After luncheon, at the request of the 
Press Association, I was photographed, and brought a 
friend to see Fenway Court, one of the marvels of the 
modern world, with its gardens, its flowers, its fountains, its 
architecture, its paintings, statues, tapestry, furniture, mar- 
bles, majolicas, laces, books, manuscripts, bric-a-brac of 
every imaginable sort and description. It was my second 
visit, as I had been there once before. 

From there I drove to Cambridge and saw the Stadium, 
a great horseshoe in concrete, with double arches, an arena 
and sloping seats, calling to mind the Roman Colosseum in 
some way by its appearance, and very much so by its size. 
There, I suppose, the great football battles will be fought, 
to use the proper term, not football games played, fhe 
gladiator's "young barbarians" were at play, but our young 
barbarians put on their armor, have surgeons and ambu- 
lance in attendance when two great colleges meet and fight 
for victory. The work at times is simply brutal. What a 
pity the Rugby game cannot be played here as it is in 
England, with the violence left out. I went, too, to the 
Harvard Union to see Sargent's portrait of Mr. Henry Hig- 
ginson, the princely benefactor, who not only gave Harvard 
its athletic field but the Harvard Union building to encour- 
age friendship and sociability among the students. I drove 
home over Massachusetts avenue and the beautiful Charles 
River, and my native town never looked lovelier than it 
did in last evening's westering sun. In addition to all this 
I managed to see a few friends. 

The return journey was accomplished as rapidly as the 
first. Leaving Boston to-day at lo I was in New York at 
3, and in Newark at 4. If ever there was an unexpected 
and impromptu visit it was this, an illustration of the 
French phrase, "Ce n'est que I'imprevu qui arrive" (it is 
only the unforeseen that takes place). 

Newark, March 23, 1904. G. H. DOANE. 



H H)a^ in IRew l^orft 



This time I did not go so far afield. A friend of many 
years standing, whom I generally see once a month, as he 
is an officer of one of the Cunard steamships, met me this 



44 ©odne £etfer0 

morning at Christopher street ferry, in New York, and we 
went to see three things. The first one was a superb Rosa 
Bonheur, a stag, a monarch of the glen, who stands life- 
size facing you, and looking as if he was about to step 
right out of the canvas into the room. This was at Knoed- 
ler's gallery. Fifth avenue and Thirty-fourth street, and 
is to be seen there every day, with many other beautiful 
works of art. 

The second was the Sargent portrait of the Misses Hunt- 
er in the Gallery of American Artists, in Fifty-seventh street 
beyond, I think, Seventh avenue, not far from the Carnegie 
Music Hall. This was the great attraction of the Philadel- 
phia exhibition this winter, and it deserves all the abounding 
praise it received, for it certainly is a marvelous group. 
The three sisters sit together, two in black and one in 
white, most perfectly finished portraits, absolutely at their 
ease, and the details and accessories and finish are wonder- 
fully done. There are many other pictures there, but they 
all fade before this one. That itself is the exhibition. The 
grace and abandon of the hands and arms are very strik- 
ing; the tulle kerchiefs around the necks, and the little dog 
that lies so happy and contented on one of the gowns are 
salient features of the work. A red fan held in the lap of 
the middle figure gives a bit of color and lights up the whole. 
It is certainly a picture worth going a long distance to see, 
and it will be on exhibition until May i. 

The third was Mr. Thaddeus's studio. When I was in 
London last summer I bought and brought home a copy of 
this gentleman's portrait of Leo XHL in the Sala Regia of 
the Vatican, receiving the homage of a cardinal, called "The 
Obedience." This was exhibited in Cary & Kenny's win- 
dow. Since then I sent for a copy of his portrait of Pius X. 
Some time after I heard that he was in this country, went 
to see his pictures in the Knoedler Gallery, and then himself 
in his studio, 307 Fifth avenue, and was delighted with what 
I saw, to say nothing of the pleasure of meeting him, an 
artist, "pur sang," an Irish gentleman, and a lover of the 
beautiful in all its phases and forms. 

My friend and I thought that we had had a feast of beauti- 
ful things, which would live in our memories. He came to 
Newark with me, and before we parted referred to an ex- 
pression, which he had not seen before, in my letter of last 
week, "A Day in Boston," in which I spoke of the "wester- 
ing" sun. The Century Dictionary says that the verb wester 




(WtottBignor (Beorge %. ©oatie 

From a photograph taken in 1902 



©odne feettere 45 

is an archaic or obsolete one, and gives an example of 
Holmes's use of it in the line, 

"Thy fame has journeyed westering with the sun." 
This suggested Wordsworth's lovely poem, "Stepping West- 
ward," which I got and read to him. It seems that Words- 
worth and a fellow traveller were walking by the side of 
Loch Katrine when a lady whom they met said by way of 
greeting, "What, are you stepping westward?" He wrote: 

What, are you stepping westward? — Yea, 
'Twould be a wildish destiny, 
If we, who thus together roam 
In a strange land and far from home. 
Were in this place the guests of chance! 
Yet who would stop, or fear to advance. 
Though home or shelter he had none. 
With such a sky to lead him on? 

The dewy ground was dark and cold; 

Behind all gloomy to behold; 

And stepping westward seemed to be 

A kind of heavenly destiny; 

I like the greeting; 'twas a sound 

Of something without place or bound, 

And seemed to give me spiritual right 

To travel through that region bright. 

The voice was soft, and she who spake 
Was walking by her native lake; 
The salutation had to me 
The very sound of courtesy; 
Its power was felt, and while my eye 
Was fixed upon the glorious sky, 
The echo of the voice enwrought 
A human sweetness with the thought 
Of traveling through the world that lay 
Before me in my endless way. 

G. H. DOANE. 

Newark, March 29, 1904. 



Come (Bentle Sprino" 



So writes the poet, and so say we. Yesterday I spent a 
few minutes in Branch Brook Park, which as yet shows no 



46 ®oane Eetters 

sign of waking from its Winter sleep. The rain and the 
sun of this morning will arouse it, and soon the grass will 
be green again, the trees will put forth bud and leaf, and 
the flowers will gladden our eyes, and fill the air with their 
sweet perfume. "April showers will brine: May flowers," as 
the old adage says. To quote the poets agam, and they are 
the only adequate interpreters of nature, "Spring comes 
slowly up this way," and "Spring unlocks the flowers to 
paint the laughing soil." 

One thing I noticed, and that was the scarlet oak, and 
boulder, and inscription to the memory of Eugene Vander- 
pool, who, among the many men who, as Commissioners, 
have co-operated to make the parks what they are. stands 
foremost. Well is he commemorated in this beautiful and 
appropriate way at tne entrance to the park. 

I had not thought to write to you this week, but I stopped 
and spoke to Mr. Erler, who keeps the boats on the lake, 
and he gave me a message, which I must lose no time in 
deliverinp-. The message is. as it was last year, to the 
trained nurses of Newark in the hospitals. He wishes them 
to know that he offers them the free use of his boats any 
days in the week but Saturdays and Sundays, up to 5 or 6 
o'clock, and hopes they will avail themselves of this offer, 
as they did last year. 

I would like to make, in this connection, a suggestion to 
the Public Service Corporation. In the Winter, when the 
ice will bear, they put notices on their cars, "Skating at 
Branch Brook Park." Why should they not during the 
season which is now commencing put signs, "Boating at 
Branch Brook Park"'? It would be to their pecuniary ad- 
vantage to do so. and it would bring many to see and enjoy 
the park who otherwise would not go. 

I cannot finish this letter without a reference to the 
beautiful exhibition of photographs by the Camera Club in 
the lecture room of the Public Library. I was amazed 
when I saw it by the extent of it; some four hundred ex- 
hibits in all, and the very great beauty of the majority of 
them. It compares most favorably with the exhibition 
of the Photographic Society of England, which I saw some 
years ago in London. 

I have seen many changes in my time. For example, 
there were only twenty-eight miles of railway in the United 
States in 1830, when I was born, and Chicago came into ex- 
istence in the same year, but in none more than in the 



^O0M £etferB 47 

photographic art, which, by the way, a wag once said would 
be a foe-to-graphic art. I remember the first daguerreo- 
types, when you had to hold the plate at a certain angle 
of light to see what was upon it, and did not see much then. 
Now the sun portrays its creations in nature as an etcher 
would. I have seen some portraits and landscapes that you 
would readily mistake for a Haden or a Whistler. The 
Camera Club deserves hearty congratulations for its success, 
and thanks from the community for spreading out its 
treasures upon the Library walls. 

Visitors to the Library will notice a new edition, a beauti- 
ful bronze bust of Edison, a memorial of the late Howard 
W. Hayes. G. H. DOANE. 

Newark, April 7, 1904. 



ZxQO Extremes 



The two extremes are two flowers that I have on the table 
before me, and which I keep looking at as I write. One is 
a crocus, the earliest of the Spring flowers, which I picked 
just now in the garden by the church, where the tulips and 
narcissus are coming up. The other is an orchid, a Cattleya, 
given to me yesterday in a friend's greenhouse, along with 
bougainvillca, snapdragon (three colors), roses and lilies. 
Of the crocus Holmes writes: 

The spendthrift crocus bursting through the mould, 
Naked and shivering with his cup of gold. 

It is a case of "simplex munditiis" — simple in its neatness, 
two or three colors and a most graceful shape. 

The orchid, on the other hand, is a child of the tropics, 
growing on the bark of the tops of trees, where it seeks 
the sunlight, and where its companions are monkeys and 
parrots. Its variety is infinite in shape and color, some- 
times in clusters, sometimes in sprays over a yard long, 
and all growing out of nothing, fastened to a board, its 
roots deriving their nutriment from warmth, air and 
moisture. It is a flagrant violation of the old Latin motto, 
"ex nihilo, nihil fit" (nothing is made of nothing), for its 
flowers so produced are among the most gorgeous in the 
world. Many years ago I saw bouquets of orchids in a 
florist's window in the Rue de la Paix, in Paris, and used 
to regard them as the ne plus ultra of Parisian luxury. 



48 ®oane feettets 

Now they are common in the shop windows of New York, 
not to say Newark. Blessings on the flower growers for the 
happiness and enjoyment they add to our lives! 

The bougainvillea brings me back to Egypt, as I saw it in 
Cairo growing in the utmost profusion, and wild, over the 
porches of the doors of the houses there. Its shape is pe- 
culiar, like three leaves joined together, and its color the most 
exquisite purple. It is named from its discoverer, L. A. de 
Bougainville, a French navigator, a sailor first, and then a 
soldier, an admiral and a field marshal, who fought with 
Montcalm and De Grasse, who would have long ago been for- 
gotten but for the exquisite flower that bears his name. 

Another floral beauty is the snapdragon, which I have seen 
growing along with the Michaelmas daisy in English gar- 
dens, and which I never see without being reminded of the 
touching and beautiful reference made to it by Cardinal New- 
man in his "Apologia pro Vita Sua," where he speaks of his 
heartbreak at leaving Oxford for conscience' sake. "I left 
Oxford for good on Monday, February 23, 1846," and then 
referring to friends who came to take leave of him he speaks 
of his first college. Trinity, which had never been unkind to 
him, and says : "There used to be much snapdragon growing 
on the walls opposite my freshman's rooms there, and I had 
for many years taken it as the emblem of my own perpetual 
residence even unto death in my university. 

"On the morning of the 23rd I left the Observatory. I have 
never seen Oxford since, excepting its spires, as they are seen 
from the railway." 

I quote this from a new edition of the "Apologia" just 
published by Longmans, at sixpence, showing the great de- 
mand there is still for the works of that great writer and 
master of English prose. Before his death he went again to 
Oxford, and to his first college, Trinity, and was received 
with signal honor, having been made an honorary Fellow. 

May I take advantage of this opportunity to correct an 
error in my letter of last week. I said that when I was born 
there were only twenty-eight miles of railway in the United 
States. I should have said 228. No doubt there are those 
living who remember when there were none at all. 

Newark. April 13, 1904. G. H. DOANE. 



©oane feettere 49 



ail a^Growin' anb a*Blowin' 



London streets are resonant now with the cry, "All 
a-growin' and a-blowin'," as the costermongers, called costers 
for short, ply their trade selling, among other things, flowers 
in pots, in many colors, plants, from their crowded wagons 
drawn by their mokes, slang for donkeys. 

Spring has come to us, as well as to our kinsfolk across 
the seas, and Spring flowers are "all a-growin' and a-blowin'," 
whichever way we turn. The crocuses started it, and now 
the tulips follow suit. The lilacs will come next, and June will 
bring the roses, and all Summer long one flower will suc- 
ceed another until the frost lays them low. 

A friend sent me to-day some trailing arbutus, which came 
to him from near Plymouth, Mass. It awakened memories 
of childhood, for as a boy I knew its haunts near Burlington, 
and every Spring when the time came used to go into the 
woods, and look for it, and bring it home to a dear sister 
who loved it much. 

You have to look for it and search for it, as it hides itself 
under the dead leaves of the previous year. You move them 
away, and there in the shade and the moisture is the little 
vine with its green leaves, its sweet, white and pink wax-like 
flowers, and its fragrant odor as of "Araby the blest." In 
English it is the trailing arbutus, sometimes called the May 
flower. In the botanical name it is Greek-Latin, Epigasa re- 
pens — Epigsea, from epi, Greek for upon, and ge, the earth 
(hence in another combination, geography), repens, Latin for 
creeping. It belongs to the heath tribe of which there are so 
many beautiful varieties, one of which, heather, covers Scot- 
land in Summer with its purple bloom, and is the home of the 
grouse, who live on its berries. 

The long, cold Winter has kept vegetation back, but these 
sunny days will bring it on apace. We have been spared a 
Spring drought, when the earth, in the words of the psalmist, 
turns to God for water, "terra sine aqua tibi" ; and a late 
frost. I watch the horse chestnut opposite my window, and 
see the evolution going on, the gradual development, the little 
bud, the tiny leaves, the flowers starting up in the centre, all 
miniature as yet, but soon the tree will be covered with its 
great green leaves and adorned with its large white blooms. 



50 ®oane %dhxz 

If we only use our eyes and observe (how many eyes there 
are that "see not" and ears that "hear not"), every day will 
bring some fresh delight, and if there is anything that makes 
life worth living it seems to me it is to watch nature in her 
varying moods as they pass before us during the year. 

I find this firetty reference to the trailing arbutus in a 
charming book I am reading by that most humorous and 
picturesque of writers, Kate Douglas Wiggin, "Timothy's 
Quest": "Here was a quiet pool where the rushes bent to the 
breeze, and the quail dinned her wing; and there a winding 
path where the cattle came down to the edge, and having 
looked upon the scene and found it all very good, dipped 
their sleek heads to drink and drink and drink of the river's 
nectar. Here the first pink May flowers pushed their sweet 
heads through the reluctant earth, and waxen Indian pipes 
grew in the moist places, and yellow violets hid themselves 
beneath their miodest leaves." G. H. DOANE. 

Newark, May 4, 1904. 



B Da^ in tbe Country 

A day in the country, or rather, bits of several days in the 
country, this is my them.e to-day. When was Nature so lavish 
of her charms as she has been this Spring? With plenty of 
water, enough sun, when was the grass greener, or the trees 
more coated with leaves than they are now? 

One day I went to Weequahic Reservation. Much has been 
done there since I last saw it. The playstead has been graded 
and soon will be covered with grass, the roads have been ex- 
tended, the trees have been thinned out, and shortly the bridge 
will be built over the railroad, which will give an entrance or 
an exit from or to the lower Elizabeth road. Above all an 
ingenious apparatus has been contrived which will clear the 
beautiful sheet of water there of the disfiguring rushes and 
cattails, and make it as pretty a lake as can anywhere be 
found. 

Planting is going on all through the parks, and I am told 
that some $32,000 worth of trees and shrubs will be planted 
this Spring. They are arriving daily, and are being set out. 

Preparations are being made for the bridges and the sub- 
ways at Park avenue and Bloomfield avenue. It is to be 
hoped that the Board of Works will consent to the Commis- 



©o(ine fietterc 51 

sioners' proposition for a slight chan.ae in the alignment of 
Park 3 venue. A straight road running through the park 
would be a disfigurement. The curve is always the line of 
beau*y. nnd the plan proposes to give that feature to this 
avenue, "o make it harmonize with the rest. The engineers 
can safely be trusted, as experience shows. 

A driven well is being made at the end of the northern 
division of Branch Brook Park, by the stables and the green- 
house-^, which will f^ive the abundant supply of water which 
is needed for the uses of the park. It is a case of "sine 
(a)aua non." 

The East Oranp-e Parkway is beinsr completed. It is 
pretty well finished from Park avenue to Main street. The 
delay in finishing the section from Main street to Central 
avenue has been caused by the fact that the city of East 
Orange has not as yet put in a proper drainage, without 
which the work can not proceed. 

Montclair Park and the Elwood avenue addition are soon 
to be completed. 

I do not know how four or five hours can be more de- 
lightfully spent than by driving out either Clinton or Spring- 
field avenue to Hilton. Just now the latter is the best, as 
parts of Clinton avenue are very rough, owing to the road- 
making going on. Hilton has been and is famous for its 
strawberries, but now a new attraction has been added in 
the way of pansies. Pansies form nature's mosaic, and with 
varied bits of color woven closely together form about as 
beautiful a cover as Mother Earth can boast of, a parti- 
colored raiment, "a coat of many colors." The pansy is 
a species of violet, viola tri-color, and is sometimes called 
heart's ease. Shakespeare refers to it in "Hamlet," 
"There is pansies, that's for thoughts." 

Milton refers to it in "Lycidas:" 

"The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet." 

And Tennyson, in "The Gardener's Daughter:" 

"Those eyes 
Darker than darkest pansies." 

From Hilton the avenue takes you to Millburn, and there 
by a sharp turn into the Riverside drive through South 
Mountain Reservation to South Orange avenue, two beau- 
tiful miles, with Campbell's pond, and the brawling brook 
(if I may so call tne Rahway River), Thistle Mill ford. First 
and Second Orange Mountain on either side, the trees in 



52 ©odne feeftetfi 

their verdure, the apple trees fairly frost :a with bloom, and 
the dogwood right and left lighting up the scene with the 
lovely ivory flakes of its flowers. 

A short distance down South Orange avenue on the left 
comes Cherry lane, which leads by the Orange reservoir, a 
beautiful sheet of water so natural as not to look artificial, 
to Northfield avenue, and so several roads bring you to 
Newark. This drive is beautiful in the spring and in the 
autumn, and just now its spring beauty is at its height, 
and will be while the dogwood lasts. 

The chemistry, the alchemy, the alembic of nature, how 
wonderful they are! Hidden in the brown mould are her 
palette and her brushes, and all these infinite varieties of 
color and shape which delight our vision are being pro- 
duced unseen by mortal eyes. The red of the rose is there, 
the green of the grass and the leaves, the violet's blue, the 
dogwood's white, in fine, all the colors of the floral prism, 
of the floral rainbow. The seed, tne earth, the sun, the rain, 
with these she works; these are her implements, her tools. 
We call it nature, but let us rather call it the Hand of God, 
for what would nature be without Him? 

Cowper's line is as true as it is trite: 
"God made the country, and man made the town." 

Newark, May i6, 1904. G. H. DOANE. 



/IDore Wa^s in tbe Country? 



Years ago, fifty at least, when I was staying with Arch- 
deacon Harrison, a friend of my father's, in the precincts 
at Canterbury, I saw a lady pick a rose, which she said she 
was going to send to another friend of mine in London, Sir 
Robert Harry Inglis. Sir Robert, the member for Oxford, 
was a delightful old English gentleman, who always wore a 
rose in his buttonhole. His habit was known, and roses 
used to be sent to him from all over England that they 
might be used for that purpose. The lady who picked the 
rose that day was Miss Stanley, sister of Canon, afterward 
Dean, Stanley, then in residence, whom I met there. 

Latterly I have felt as if I was being treated by my friends 
as Sir Robert Inglis was by his, for I constantly receive 
gifts of wild flowers sent by those who read my letters in 
The Sunday Call. Within the last few days pink dogwoods, 



©oane iLdttxB 53 

wild orchids and painted cup, to my mind the most beau- 
tiful wild flower that grows, have come to me in that way. 

Speaking of Sir Robert Inglis has reminded me of an 
occasion when I was his guest at an ii o'clock breakfast, 
a scientific breakfast, at his house in Bedford Square, in 
London. Lord Rosse was there, and Sir Roderick Murchi- 
son, and Sir George Airy, and Sir Richard Owen, astron- 
omy, geology, comparative anatomy and palaeontology rep- 
resented by their heads. At the end of the breakfast Sir 
Robert, who had had a cup of tea, asked Lady Inglis for a 
cup of coffee, as, he said, he never could tell which he 
liked best. I have the same difficulty myself. Since then I 
have met Lord Rosse's son, the present Lord Rosse, at the 
Athenaeum Club in London, and at his house. You are no 
longer asked now to breakfast at ii, but to luncheon at 
I, or thereabouts. 

Another reminiscence of those davs. My lodgings were 
in Blenheim street, New Bond street, and I used to have 
The Times in the morning with my chops and tea for two- 
pence (4 cents) from 8 to 9. Some one had it at the 
hour before me. Some one else would have it the 
hour after, and in the afternoon it would go to the 
country. The Times was then, before the tax on news- 
papers was taken ofif, sixpence, or twelve and a half cents. 
Since then it has been threepence, or six cents, and I see 
there has been a further reduction for subscribers recently. 

I have wandered away from my subject, "More Days in 
the Country." Hearing of a large apple orchard in bloom 
at Montgomery, I went to see it the other afternoon. I 
took the River road to Belleville. The tide was high, mud- 
banks were hidden, and the flow of the river, with just a 
ripple on its surface between its green banks and under its 
trees reflected in its waters, was most beautiful. At Belle- 
ville I turned to the left, and followed Second River to 
Montgomery. I was too late for the apple blossoms, but the 
pretty little stream rippling over its stones, the fresh green 
foliage, the excellent road, made the drive a delightful one. 

Some days before word was sent to me from Bloomfield 
by one who said he read my letters in The Sunday Call of 
two dogwood trees in Mr. Beach's garden, corner of Beach 
and Elm streets, near the beautiful park or common, a 
white and a pink one which he urged me to see. From 
Montgomery I drove along Franklin street to Bloomfield, 
admired the grass and the elms in the common, and then 



54 ©oane ^Ltiitxti 

went to the indicated place, and had that peculiar feeling 
which surprise creates of having your breath taken away, 
as I saw those two trees standing side by side, a blonde and 
a brunette, as it were, covered with bloom, and vying with 
each other in beauty. The sun lit them up, and the com- 
bination was simply exquisite, worth coming miles to see. 

The drive home was down Franklin street, the old Bloom- 
field road, to Silver Lake, across the canal, anu through the 
park. 

What a beautiful provision of nature that is by which the 
sun covers the trees with leaves when the warm weather 
comes, raises, as it were, a big umbrella over our heads to 
protect us from its rays! In this we shall profit by the ex- 
cellent work of the Shade Tree Commission in our town. 
The city has made a great improvement in putting the new 
sidewalk on Park place. The p-ardening in the city parks 
is poor and insufficient, suflfers by contrast with the same 
kind of work in the country parks. A thoroughly competent 
landscape gardener has been at work there, whereas in the 
city antiquated methods obtain, and the result is meagre and 
unsatisfactory. The wire inclosures of the flowers should 
certainly be done away with. With skill and a small ex- 
penditure of money, Military and Washmgton and Lincoln 
Parks might be made jewels in the adornment of the city. 

This is not the first time I have written to you about the 
painted cup. Some four years ago, a little later in the year, 
a bunch of it was brought to me by Mr. Cole, engineer of the 
Park Commission, from Ball's BlufT, South Mountain Reser- 
vation. Brilliant red and brilliant green combine to form its 
beauty. Botanically it is "Castilleia Coccinea," and it is of 
the Figwort tribe. It is sometimes called painter's brush, or 
flame flower. 

It inspired the pen of Bryant, our American Wordsworth, 
who commences a poem about it, entitled "The Painted Cup," 
in this way : 

"The fresh Savannas of the Sangamon 
Here rise in gentle swells, and the long grass 
Is mixed with rustling hazels. Scarlet tufts 
Are growing in the green, like flakes of fire ; 
The wanderers of the prairie know them well, 
And call that brilliant flower the Painted Cup." 
Newark, May 23, 1004. G. H. DOANE. 



©oane Eettere 55 



®nl^ a Spra^ of Wiil^ Xaurel 



Only a spray of wild laurel, oi laurel from a mountainside, 
only a little white, a little red, a little brown, a little green, 
and j'et for grace, and combination of color, and shape of 
flower and leaf, I doubt whether it could be surpassed in the 
floral world. What a theme it would have been for Ruskin' 
It has been standing before me all the morning, and "jumps 
into my eyes," as the French say, every time I move or look 
up to challenge my admiration anew. 

Then what an association it has with the glories of the 
past, it and its congeners. There are many varieties of it it 
seems. Ours is the kalmia, kalmia latifolia, sometimes called 
calico-bush from the color of its flowers. When in bloom it 
covers whole hillsides with white. To its family belong the 
gorgeous rhododendron and the modest arbutus, the ground 
laurel. I say it has an association with the glories of the past, 
for the bay tree, or bay laurel, laurus sobilis, is the true 
laurel of the ancients, and the poets, as is said in the Cen- 
tury Dictionary. The warrior, the poet, the artist, or anyone 
who achieved distinction was crowned with laurel in the old 
Greek and Roman days. 

I only picked up my pencil at the fag end of the morning 
or I could write you a long letter to-day about things I have 
recently seen, this time in New York. One day I had occa- 
sion to go to Manhattanville, to the Academy there, and went 
up through Central Park, and back by the Riverside drive. 
I had seen neither in a long time and was amazed at the 
beauty and completeness of both. I do not want to deal in 
the language of hyperbole, but I should doubt if there is a 
finer driveway in the world than the latter. Some one has 
called it the "Corniche" of the Hudson. The retaining stone 
wall flanks the road with its driveway, its saddleway, its path- 
ways, and if you look across it you see grass and shrubs and 
flowers down to the shore, while trees and shrubs and grass 
and flowers abound on the level. 

Another day a friend invited me to go to see two things 
we had both heard of and wanted to see. Claremont, near 
the end of the Riverside drive, a historic spot, associated with 
Washington, with an exquisite view, and excellent provision 
for man and beast. That, too, far surpassed my utmost ex- 



56 ©carte £etfer0 

pectations. From there we drove across country, six miles 
from the old Albany Post road to the old Boston Post road, 
to the entrance of the New York Zoological Park at the 
Bronx. Central Park is a garden, the Bronx is a forest, the 
one artificial, the other natural, each beautiful in its way, and 
each never more so than in this marvelous Spring. Fine 
roads and paths have been made among the trees, and lead 
to the different houses and enclosures where the various ani- 
mals, birds, etc., are contained. It is quite as fine in every 
way as the Zoological Garden in London, and on a much 
larger scale. Many animals you see as in their native haunts, 
the deer and the buffalo for example. In instances you see 
the young as well, little deer, little monkeys, little bears, etc. 

Carriages are not allowed in the park, but rolling-chairs 
are provided at the very reasonable rate of fifty cents an hour. 
I never see a rolling-chair without being reminded of an 
amusing incident which occurred to me once in Paris. I 
undertook to see both "salons," the old and the new, in one 
day. As between them there were about 4,000 pictures, when 
I came to the second I got into a rolling-chair. The man 
who pushed it had much to say, and among other things told 
me that a highly colored impressionist picture we were look- 
ing at was an aurora borealis. In the evening a friend of the 
artist told me it was a sunset in Florida, and it would do 
for either! 

This excursion is very easily managed from Nev/ark. We 
took the D., L. and W. Railroad to Christopher street and the 
Ninth Avenue Elevated to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth 
street and Claremont. From there we drove to the Bronx, 
but the route otherwise would be. One Hundred and Twenty- 
fifth street surface railway across to Third avenue, the ele- 
vated railroad to One Hundred and Ninety-eighth street, 
terminus of the line, and a cab or a walk for a mile through 
the beautiful botanical garden, with its great museum and 
greenhouses, to the entrance to the Zoo. The Third Avenue 
brought us to Ninth street on our return, and the Eighth 
street surface car to the Christopher street ferry, like a deed 
to the place of beginning. 

I said nothing about the annual inspection of the parks, on 
which I had the pleasure of accompanying the Park Com- 
missioners, for the newspapers literally left nothing for me 
to say. They so exhausted the ground as to reduce me to 
silence. I might possibly have referred to the new signboards 
scattered through the parks with appropriate names of roads 



©octne &etter0 57 

and walks. I could only do what Mr. Cruger is said to have 
done at Bristol when he and Mr. Burke had been successful 
at the polls, and Mr. Burke had returned thanks, "Gentle- 
men, I say ditto to Mr. Burke." G. H. DOANE. 
Newark, June 9, 1904. 



Ube St. %o\xi3 Exposition 



I was given yesterday "Jackson's Famous Photographs of 
the St. Louis Exposition and the Pike," and learned from the 
map of the city, and the Exposition grounds, precisely where 
the latter are situated, west of the town. Association of 
ideas brought to my mind a conversation I once had, it was in 
1869, with Mrs. Hunt, a daughter of Mr. Lucas, who, with 
Mr. Chouteau, was one of the founders of the city. It was 
when I was going from city to city, collecting funds for the 
American College in Rome. Mrs. Hunt was one of those who 
gave $5,000, and founded a burse. She was a Creole, a de- 
vout Catholic, a woman of good intelligence, and charming 
and cultivated manners. 

She told me that her father, who had some army appoint- 
ment in Pittsburg, sold a horse, and the wife, a shrewd woman, 
noticing the rise in the value of real estate, induced her hus- 
band to buy some land. This, increasing in value, they sold, 
and decided to move from Pittsburg to St. Louis. To do so, 
they floated down the Ohio in a flatboat to the junction with 
the Mississippi, and cordelled up the Mississippi. Cordelling 
means tying a rope to a tree up the stream, pulling up to it, 
then tying to another tree farther up, pulling to that, and 
so on. In that way they reached the site of St. Louis, 
and settled there. The father bought land in the heart of 
the city, which increased enormously in value, and died 
leaving a large estate. 

But what I want to come to is the particular fact that the 
site of the Exposition calls to my mind. It stands on the 
ground which the settlers used in common for planting 
their potatoes and other crops, and Mrs. Hunt told me that, 
while some of the settlers would be engaged in planting the 
field, cultivating the crops, or gathering them in, others, 
her father among them, would be watching the Indians be- 
yond with their rifles and shooting them if they interfered 
with their companions. There could not well be anything 



58 ®oane feetfets 

more primitive than this, and now there stands on this very 
spot the most elaborate series of buildings that the hand 
of man has ever constructed, the most marvelous collec- 
tion of objects of use, and of art, representative structures, 
and people of all the nations of the earth, palaces of fine 
arts, of mines and metallurgy, of manufactures, of electricity 
and machinery, of agriculture, horticulture, etc., erected at 
a cost of nearly fifty millions of dollars to commemorate 
the Louisiana Purchase for fifteen millions of dollars, by 
which that great extent of territory was added to the United 
States. 

Very likely among the Indians in their wigwams, or 
tepees, in their encampment on the grounds, are some de- 
scendants of those whom the early settlers kept off the 
same ground, then the settlers' farm or planting field. Could 
there be a greater object lesson of the marvelous growth and 
prosperity of our country than this? 

I have reason to remember St. Louis with pleasure not 
only because I succeeded there with my mission extremely 
well, and met a great many delightful people, but because I 
there formed the acquaintance, which instantly ripened into 
friendship, with Father Ryan, whose guest I was, who 
proved to be a most delightful host, and who helped me in 
every way in his power. The Father Ryan of those days is 
now Archbishop Ryan, of Philadelphia, and every one knows 
how he is beloved and honored not only there, but all over 
the land. 

To come from the past to the present, I was in hopes 
that I would have something to tell you this week about 
Fort George, on the Hudson, of which I had heard, and 
where I had arranged to go last Tuesday. When the day 
came I was not able to go. I have been once or twice to 
the parks. At Branch Brook, in the northern division, the 
newly acquired Heller tract has been graded, the artesian 
well is nearly finished, as are the stables and carpenters' 
and blacksmiths' shops. In the greenhouses some two thou- 
sand chrysanthemum plants are vigorously growing, Avith 
great promise of beauty in the Autumn. The earth taken 
from the excavation for the bridges is being used to fill up 
low ground. In the middle division baseball is very active, 
and the wading pool alive with boys. In the southern divi- 
sion the see-saws and parellel bars are in constant use. 
What a paradise for children in the holidays! At Wee- 
quahic, beyond the horse stables, there is a nursery with 



©oane feetfere 59 

rows of roses, crimson ramblers among them, Lychnis 
Chalcedonica, and other flowering plants, to say nothing 
of oaks and maples and elms a foot high. The roses have 
lasted in bloom a very short time this year. It looks as if 
they had been stunned by the severe cold last Winter, 
when not killed. It was the same with the dogwood. 

In the town the county and city buildings are progressing 
well. The City Hall is a massive building, but the Court 
House will be extremely beautiful. I call one prose, the 
other poetry. The Fourth Precinct station, on Seventeenth 
avenue, is a model of what such a building should be, so that 
on the whole, when we come to take an account of stock, 
and to see where we stand, the balance is on the right side 
of the metaphorical ledger. 

G. H. DOANE. 

Newark, July 22, 1904. 



TLbc Cart>lnal jflower 



Everything in this world has its compensation. One of 
the compensations for staying so much at home this Sum- 
mer has been that I have been able to follow the flowers 
one after the other as they appeared in their turn in the 
garden and in the wood. How wonderfully they know 
"their times and their seasons." Regular as clockwork they 
come and they go, one succeeding the other, from the early 
crocus in the Spring to the latest Autumn bloom. Just 
now the gardens are bright with the yellow rudbeckia, 
named from a Dutch botanist, Rudbeck, as dahlia was 
named from another one, Dahl, and the diflferent colored 
phloxes, specially fine this year, as they have had abundant 
water. The wood is bright with the cardinal flower, which 
vies in brilliancy with the scarlet tanager that flies, a beam 
of color, from branch to branch on the trees while the 
flower reflects its color on the stream below. In "Nature's 
Garden," which contains so many beautiful pictures of wild 
flowers, the last one is of the cardinal flower and the painted 
cup. The painted cup I had already had earlier in the sea- 
son, and now from the same friendly source comes the 
cardinal flower, equally bright and equally beautiful, but en- 
tirely different in shape. It takes its name from its resem- 
blance in color to that worn by the cardinals, the seventy 
princes of the Church, who form the Sacred College. They 



6o ®oane feetters 

wear that color to signify their readiness to shed their blood 
for their faith and in defence of the Holy See, as their oath 
requires them to, "usque ad ef?usionem sanguinis." 

The cardinal flower, or red lobelia, botanically "lobelia 
cardinalis," is to be found in wet or low ground from July 
to September. It is a twin sister of the beautiful blue 
lobelia, which differs from it only in color. Linnaeus gave 
the lobelias their name, calling them after Matthias d'Obel, 
a Flemish botanist or herbalist, who afterward became phy- 
sician to James I. of England. 

I never see a cardinal flower without being reminded of a 
month spent long ago with sister, brother and niece in a 
New England village, Princeton by name, not far from 
Worcester, Mass., under the shadow of Wachusett. In our 
daily drives one would shout, looking out of one window, 
"Cardinal flower"; another, looking out of the opposite win- 
dow, "Clematis," both then in their glory. We had lodgings 
in a house owned by Mr. Gregory, near the hotel where we 
had our meals. My brother called the house Casa Gre- 
goriana, from a Roman name, and once in the early morn- 
ing my sister found Mrs. Gregory, as complaint had been 
made of a door's not shutting well, using Mr. Gregory's 
razor — the grey mare was decidedly the better horse — Hke 
an adze, hewing the saddle down and shaving it off so that 
the door would shut. The hotel, or inn, was a very primitive 
one. The first time I sat down to table one of the waitresses 
began to whisper something in my ear. I thought it was a 
message and that somebody wanted me, and started to get 
up. There was no bill of fare, and what she was doing was 
telling me what there was for dinner, boiled dinner, fried 
chicken, roast beef. I had never heard of boiled dinner 
before, and had to ask what it meant. After that, when the 
whispering commenced, I knew what it was about. This 
reminds me of two other experiences with waitresses. One 
was at Island Pond, on the Grand Trunk Railway. I had 
asked the proprietor for mustard. He said: "The lady will 
get it for you." My friend said: "The lady in waiting!" 

The other was at Nantucket. The hotel was a temperance 
one, but a friend of mine who was there thought I ought to 
have some claret with my dinner. He went to the drug 
store and bought three bottles of St. Julien, had the cork 
of one drawn and put on the table, where I found it when 
I went to the dining-room. I poured some into a tumbler, 
filling it about half full, and held it out to a waitress to have 



©oAne £etter0 6i 

it filled up with water. She looked horror-stricken and 
dumfounded, as she thought I was offering it to her to 
drink, and said in a sort of a shamefaced way: "No, thank 
you!" 

Princeton may be known to some of your readers, as a 
popular writer, just who I do not remember now, once wrote 
an article about it in, I think, Scribner's Magazine, in which 
he called it "Hide-and-Seek Village," as in driving over the 
undulating country you constantly lose sight of it and then 
it reappears. I have another delightful association with those 
days and evenings at Princeton. Whenever there was leisure, 
and the knitting was taken up, I read aloud, and the book I 
read was "St. Ronan's Well," and I read it through. In what 
of his books was Sir Walter Scott more delightful than in 
this, with its Meg Dods, its old and new Hottle, it Penelope 
Penfeather, etc.? That book particularly has a halo around it 
for me from its association with those happy days. 

But I have wandered far afield ; to come back to the flow- 
ers. No wonder Linnaeus said, speaking of the unfolding of 
a blossom : "I saw God in His glory passing near me, and 
bowed my head in worship," or the poet of this particular 

flower — 

"The cardinal, and the blood-red spots, 

Its double in the stream ; 
As if some wounded eagle's breast, 

Slow throbbing o'er the plain. 
Had left its airy path impressed 

In drops of scarlet rain." 
Newark, August 8, 1904. G. H, DOANE. 

"Ube Everlasting Ibills** 



up to Tuesday I had been six days from home this Summer. 
Four of these were spent at Deal Beach, at the house of an 
old and dear friend, and two at Atlantic City, where I wanted 
to see two dear little members of the fourth generation, a 
great-great niece and a great-great nephew, who have made 
me a great-great uncle twice over; and their father and 
mother. 

This time, the third time, I came farther afield to Bethlehem 
Street, called for short Bethlehem, a pretty little upland vil- 
lage, 1,500 feet above the sea, in the White Mountain region 
of New Hampshire. 



62 ®oane SLCiUxB 

I left Newark Tuesday morning, and noticed on my way 
to New York myriads of wild roses, eglantine, lining the 
banks of the waterways on the meadows, like red poppies in 
the grain on Italian fields. In New York I took the i p. m. 
Shore Line train for Boston. The day was cool and there 
was no dust, the atmosphere washed dry by the rain. I will 
not say there were no cinders, for my smarting eyes would 
contradict me if I did. I had the Fortnightly for August, as 
I wanted to read an article by W. S. Lilly on "Cardinal New- 
man and the New Generation," and what memories it evoked! 
The first time I ever saw Cardinal Newman was at Meurice's 
Hotel in Paris, in 1855. Afterwards I saw him, and heard 
him preach, in Rome, in Dublin, atthe Oratory inEdgebaston, 
Birmingham, his home for many years, and again in Birming- 
ham in the cathedral when he was received by the bishop. 
Dr. Ullathorne, after he had been made a prince of the church. 
I have engravings of him, one by Cozzens from a drawing 
made by Lady Coleridge as an Oratorian Father, one by John- 
son, an American artist, an etching, and one by Barlow from 
Millais's picture of him after he was made Cardinal, with that 
ineffable head and face. The oicture I have seen in Norfolk 
House in London, as it belongs to the Duke of Norfolk. It is 
one of the portraits of the world with the scarlet zucchetto 
on his white hair, scarlet mozzetta, scarlet cassock, white lace 
rochet, brilliant beyond expression, with the intellectual, be- 
nign and kindly face, and hands folded on his lap, coronatus, 
crowned, after his holy and laborious life. It was shown 
with my etchings in the Public Library a short time ago. 

With him must be associated Cardinal Manning, "par nobile 
fratrum," though like St. Peter and St. Paul, not always in 
accord. Cardinal Manning dedicated the first volume of his 
S,ermons as Archdeacon of Chichester to my father, who went 
to England to preach the sermon at the opening of the parish 
church in Leeds for Dr. Hook. This made a tie between us, 
and he was very friendly. 1 heard him preach in Rome, in 
the Church of St. Andrea delle. Fratte, and in San Carlo al 
Corso. His voice was like a silver trumpet, and his utterance 
easy, slow and distinct, language beautiful, forcible and con- 
vincing., It seems as if he said, "Come, let us reason to- 
gether." I saw him and heard him many times in London. 
The last time I saw him was there not many weeks before 
his death, shrunk to a shadow and very deaf, but anax andron, 
king of men, to the last. There has been no such funeral 
of a public man in London, after that of the Duke of Welling- 



©oane feetter0 63 

ton, as his. The two Cardinals, lie, one in Rednal Green near 
Birmingham, the other in Kensal Green Cemetery, near Lon- 
don; but their works do follow them. 

The Shore Line route to Boston is a very beautiful one, as 
water is in view much of the way, the waters of the Sound, 
and the rivers that seek the sea. The finest among these is 
the Connecticut, with its broad estuary, and the little tiny 
ferryboat, the Lady Fenwick, reminder of Colonial times, 
that crosses by the railway bridge. The first time I made 
the journey was in reverse order, from Boston to New York 
and Burlington when I was three years old. So far as I re- 
member, we went by rail to Providence, by stage coach to 
Stonington, by the old Sound steamer Massachusetts to New 
York, by steamer to Perth Amboy, by rail, the old-fashioned 
English compartment cars, like a stage coach with seats across, 
to Bordentown, and then by boat to Burlington. Traveling 
was not made easy in those davs as it is in ours. 

Breaking the journey at Boston, "mine own romantic town," 
as Scott loved to call his native city, Edinburgh, the next 
morning I drove to the North Station to take the train which 
would bring me to The Everlasting Hills. My conveyance 
was a victoria, which in its day must have belonged to some 
fine lady, and I passed as I went the old familiar landmarks, 
such of them as are left. The day was perfect, clear and cool 
for October. The train started at 9:20. The car in which I 
was was half empty, as it was the day before, so again there 
was plenty of room, and no crowd. The track some miles out 
of Boston enters the Merrimac Valley, strikes the Merrimac 
River and runs along its beautiful banks, now on one side and 
now on the other, to Lake Winnipissiogee, passing Lowell, 
Manchester and Concord, to whose mills the river furnishes 
their water power; those towns where cotton is king. This 
route forms a beautiful approach to the White Mountains 
and the Franconia range, and a day like yesterday added to 
the charm. Its beauty beguiled the way. Books, for once, 
were of no account. The goldenrod, our American heather, 
substituting yellow for purple, in its many varieties, was burst- 
ing into bloom, and the country, owing to this Summer's 
abundant rainfall, was green, grass and trees, as in early 
Spring. Every now and then there would be a bit of color, 
the autumnal leaves beginning to show themselves, the maples 
first with their bright, almost scarlet, red. I do not believe 
in tracing resemblances, e. g., comparing the Hudson with the 
Rhine, or saying that the Bay of New York resembles the 



64 ©odne £etter» 

Bay of Naples, both beautiful, but utterly dissimilar in every- 
thing but the water common to both, but I must confess Win- 
nipissiogee, as I skirted it, reminded me of Windermere, and 
I felt like looking for Bowness and Grasmere and Afnbleside. 
Then again the word Winnipissiogee brought back the 
verses my Father wrote many years ago, when homoeopathy 
was first being introduced, and its founder, Hahnemann, was 
prescribing his triturations and dilutions, which read as fol- 
lows: 

Take a little rum 

(The less you take the better) 

Pour it in the lakes 
Of Wener or of Wetter. 

Stir the mixture well, 

Lest it should prove inferior, 
Then put half a drop 

Into Lake Superior. 

Take a little out, 

And mind you don't get groggy, 
Pour it in the lake 

Of Winnipissiogee. 

Every now and then 

Take a drop in water; 
You'll be better soon. 

Or at least you oughter. 

The train stopped at Plymouth half an hour for dinner, 
and then went up the valley of another smaller, but beautiful 
river, the Pemegewassett. Later still it struck the Connecti- 
cut on one side, and the Ammonoosuc on the other, and 
finally reached Bethlehem Junction, where a little train takes 
the place of the old time stage coach, as I remember it, and 
brings you a distance of two miles to Bethlehem. This is one 
of many visits I have paid to this delightful place, the one 
I remember best having been in 1880, twenty-four years ago, 
when my semi-centennial was celebrated at the Sinclair Hotel, 
at a large family gathering. That very year the piece of 
ground was bought on which the house in which I am now 
writing was built. The owner wanted it for a quiet retreat, 
and so I suggested the name Parva Domus, little house, from 
an old Roman inscription, parva domus, magna quies, little 



©oane £etfers 65 

house, great quiet. 

The attractions of Bethlehem are the air, the drives and 
the views of the Presidential and Franconia ranges, and the 
peace and tranquillity which reign supreme. Many and hal- 
lowed are the memories and associations which cluster around 
this house, which, when it was built, was the only private 
house belonging to an outsider, in the village. It stands on 
the slope of a hill facing the west, and overlooking the Lit- 
tleton Valley. The event of the day is the sunset seen across 
the valley over Mount Mansfield, the highest of the Green 
Mountains of Vermont. The variety of shapes and colora- 
tion of the clouds is infinite like a kaleidoscope, and when 
the orb of day finally disappears the afterglow remains and 
fades away until the light is turned into night. A friend who 
was once watching it from this very room, or the piazza which 
is its extension, exclaimed "stepping westward," as it reminded 
her of those lovely words which Wordsworth wrote in his 
poem about the highland lassie whom he met on the shore of 
Lake Ketterine, as he spelled it, 

"And stepping westward seemed to be 
A kind of heavenly destiny." 

G. H. DOANE. 

Parva Domus, Bethlehem, N. H., August 25, 1904. 



/©ore Days in tbe TKHbite /IDountains 



In the letter I wrote you from here a few days ago I 
said that the event of the day is the sunset. That evening I 
was rewarded by one of the most beautiful and extraor- 
dinary sunsets that I have ever seen even here. I thought 
it was going to be a plain sunset, only a glow and nothing 
more, as the sky was apparently cloudless. In a little while 
it seemed to be not sky but sea that was spread before us 
beyond the hills, a smooth, tranquil, luminous sea, with little 
islands and little boats, so what clouds there were appeared, 
and the illusion lasted as long as the light remained. The 
effect of a moonlight night is very lovely. 
The blue vault of heaven, with its crescent so pale, 
And all its bright spangles, said Allan O'Daie, 
is seen here in great perfection. Just now the moon is 
full, and irradiates the earth with its silver sheen. At night 
as you look out and up Wordsworth's lines come into your 



66 ©odne feetter0 

mind instinctively: 

The silence that is in the starry sky, 
The sleep that is among the lonely hills. 

Bethlehem is a place for short drives, and long excur- 
sions. Among the former the Swayze farm and Gale River, 
the Echo farm, Kimball's Hill, Mount Agassiz, around the 
Heater, by the Ammonoosuc River; among the latter the 
Profile House and the Flume, the drive to Jefferson, to 
the Notch, etc. This year I had a new one to take up the 
valley of the Ammonoosuc toward Crawford's Notch, to 
see the new million and a half dollar hotel, the Mount 
Washington, at Bretton Woods, near Fabyan. The day 
was perfect, and the drive over a good road, the old post 
road, and the new road to avoid the railroad, a series of 
beautiful views. First came the small old inn, the White 
Mountain, then the Twin Mountain, in whose hall hung 
a notice, showing the presence of hay fever patients, asking 
every one not to bring golden rod into the house, seven 
miles from Bethlehem; Fabyan and Mount Pleasant, near 
each other, six miles further; thence toward the foot of 
Mount Washington, the new hotel, the highest expression 
I have seen of a modern American summer hotel building. 
It is wood, covered with stucco, of a good but simple archi- 
tecture, has an immense marble swimming pool in the base- 
ment, superb piazzas, an octagonal dining room, a great 
music hall, a roof garden, etc., etc. I was only there for 
luncheon, but heard that the prices are high. Probably 
the proprietors would say what Milliken, of the old Glen 
House, the other side of the mountain, long since burned 
down, used to say, the only thing my patrons can find fault 
with is the prices! 

The drive home in the evening lights was very beautiful, 
and on the whole, for suitable length and variety of scenery, 
it is the best excursion from Bethlehem. One thing that 
added to the pleasure of the day was the finding of a number 
of Newark and other friends, headed by Governor Murphy, 
Senator Johnson and Mr. Church. Here I have found our 
worthy postmaster, Mr. Hays. We live to learn. Speaking 
of big hotels, it never occurred to me until I read it re- 
cently in The Fortnightly that caravanserai comes from 
caravan, and is the Eastern word for the sheltered places 
or inns at the proper intervals in the routes of the caravans, 
where man and beast, the latter mostly camels, would stop 



©oane iztUxB 67 

£or the night for food and rest. 

Ghisholm's White Mountain Guide says that the White 
Mountains of New Hampshire -cover an area of about thir- 
teen hundred square miles, between the Maine border and 
the Connecticut Valley, the Androscoggin, Upper Ammo- 
noosuc Valley, and the basin of Lake Winnipesaukee (spelt 
elsewhere in these letters Winnipissiogee). The central 
chain of mountains, sometimes called the Great Range, or 
the Presidential Range, is thirteen miles long, extending 
from Mount Madison to Mount Webster, in a direction of 
south southwest, and culminating in the lofty peak of Mount 
Washington. This I may say is about 6,300 feet high, about 
half the height of "the monarch of mountains," Mont Blanc, 
White Mountain, one of the highest peaks of the Alps. That 
is a snow mountain, white all the year, above the line of per- 
petual snow, and there is nothing in nature so grand and 
impressive and majestic as one of these. 

The Guide goes on to say that the group carries snow 
through nearly half the year, and on account of this cir- 
cumstance received the name of the White Mountains from 
the early settlers along the New England coast more than 
two centuries ago. Several leagues to the southwest are 
the Franconia Mountains, and various other groups and 
ranges are found in all directions. The almost infinite va- 
riety of scenery in this region constitutes its great charm, 
and gives it a perennial interest even to those who have 
seen loftier and more famous mountain lands. Scores of 
thousands of tourists enter this district every summer, com- 
ing from all parts of the Republic, and even beyond seas, 
and each finding here that which can please and benefit. 
There is a marvelous variety of colors, the different rock 
formation of the peaks (it is the Granite State) giving rich 
contrasts of browns and grays, blacks, whites and reds, 
around which the all-pervading green of the forests sweeps 
like a vast undulating sea. So far the Guide. 

This country is reached from New York in a day, or a 
night, by the Connecticut Valley Railway, and from Boston 
by the Boston and Maine Railway in about six hours. A 
great deal of money must be spent every year, millions of 
dollars, at the Maine summer resorts. It puts one in mind 
of what the people in Florida say they live on, in summer 
fish and sweet potatoes, in winter oranges and sick Yankees, 
with apologies to Maine. 



68 ©oane Eettetfi 

There are two routes from Boston, one already described, 
the other that comes round by North Conway up the valley 
of the Saco, and through that great gorge, Crawford's 
Notch. The mountains are part of the Appalachian range, 
running from Canada to Florida, about thirteen hundred 
miles, and Mount Washington is the highest point on the 
Atlantic coast of the United States. 

The Glen House, on the other or eastern side of Mount 
Washington, used to be a favorite resort, and the place 
from which, before the mountain railway, people used to 
drive to the top. To reach it ycu left the railroad at Glen 
Station and drove about fifteen miles through the woods, a 
drive very like the drive through the Trossactis, from Cal- 
lender to Loch Katrine. It has been twice burnt, and has 
not been replaced since 1894, when it was last destroyed 
by fire. 

Some little time ago, if I may make a digression, I re- 
ceived from Quartemaster Donnelly, at Trenton, a bronze 
medal with a blue ribbon, which I have worn ever since as 
a decoration. People ask me what it is, and I tell them it 
came to me from the State of New Jersey, which voted 
one to each of the survivors of the First Defenders of the 
War of 1861. On the obverse it bears the eagle and stars, 
and the arms of the State, and the inscription, "To a first de- 
fender, 1861;" on the reverse, "The State of New Jersey 
to George H. Doane, a member of the New Jersey Bri- 
gade, Militia, for prompt and loyal service, 1861." 

To return to Bethlehem, and this lovely land, lovely by 
night as well as by day. Standing on the porch of this 
house on a bright, clear moonlignt and starlight night one 
can realize the truth of the words of the Psalmist King, 
one of the three greatest writers thi.t have ever lived, the 
other two being Isaias and St. Paul, words which are em- 
blazoned in vari-colored letters on a string-piece under the 
roof of the piazzas on which you stand, "The Heavens de- 
clare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His 
handiwork." G. H. DOANE, 

Parva Domus, Strawberry Hill, Bethlehem, N. H. 
August 30, 1904. 



©odne ii^dtttfi 69 



jEast, mest, TKame's Best'* 



I remember seeing this inscription on a stained-glass 
window over the front door in a friend's house. Above it 
was the representation of a dovecote and the doves flying 
back to the cote, which was their home. It came into 
my mind last Saturday, when, after the travels I have been 
describing, I crossed the threshold of the house v/hich has 
been my home now for forty-seven years, as I came to it 
first in 1857. "Home, sweet home, there is no place like 
home; be it ever so humble, there is no place like home." 
An occasional journey and sojourn in other places are very 
enjoyable, but one of the pleasantest features of absence is 
return, if it be not a paradox to say so. 

Although there are homes in every land, only the English 
tongue has a name for them. The French say chez vous 
(with you), the German zur haus (in the house), and the 
Italian a casa implies the same thing. 

My delightful two weeks in Bethleliem came to an end 
last Wednesday. The night before I came away there was 
another memorable sunset. This time the sky was abso- 
lutely cloudless, and the whole horizon over the hills became 
a mass of color after the sun had set — brightest orange, 
palest green and softest blue. As I sat and watched it 
Bryant's exquisite lines in "To a Waterfowl": 

Whither, 'midst falling dew, 

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou r>ursue 

Thy solitary way? 

came instinctively into my mind. The whole day had been of 
the finest. I heard a man say to another of it that it was 
one in a thousand, and it had a glorious ending in that re- 
splendent sky. 

I came back as I went, by Boston, spending two pleasant 
days there with my friends. I say pleasant, but I must make 
a qualification, as while they were pleasant in the way I 
mention,they were not pleasant so far as the weather was 
concerned. An east wind is pleasant nowhere this side of 
the Atlantic. In England it is the fair-weather wind, but 



70 ©oane iLttUxti 

it is particularly unpleasant, biting, cutting and stinging in 
Boston and parts adjacent. There is a good deal of it 
there at times, so much so that Tom Appleton, a great wag 
who lived there once, said that the east wind was the na- 
tional air of New England! We get a little touch of it here 
sometimes! 

Speaking of weather, I am reminded of what an Edin- 
burgh friend wrote me of the weather there recently when 
he went to show Abbotsford and Melrose to an American 
who had never been there before, and it poured. He tells 
it so much better than I can that 1 simply transcribe his 
words. I may say that the friend is Mr. David Douglas, the 
last of the old publishers of Edinburgh, the publisher of Dr. 
John Brown, and of the letters and journal of Sir Walter 
Scott, etc., and the American was Mr. Howells. 

He writes to thank me for some slips I sent him from 
the Sunday Call, which he kindly says are alwavs welcome, 
and then, after referring to several matters, goes on to say 
that by staying at home, which he had been doing this Sum- 
mer, he managed to see many bright birds of passage on 
their way north or south, and, to quote: "Last week I had 
my old friend and correspondent, Mr. Howells, whom we 
last met twenty-two years ago in Venice. He was our 
guide there, and I had the satisfaction of being his here, as 
he never had been in Scotland before. We went to Abbots- 
ford and Melrose, and though the day was 'soft' we enjoyed 
ourselves very much, and didn't forget the ruins of Melrose 
Abbey, to which there is now a thoroughly intelligent guide. 
I amused Mr. Howells by telling him the experience of a 
friend in Arran on a very unpromising morning. He ac- 
costed a native thus: 'A bad day, Donald!' 'No, no, not a 
baad day. It will be weet, weet, and showers between, but 
no a baad day.' Our day at Abbotsford was 'weet, weet,' 
but we saw the house and the grounds, and the Tweed brim 
full from bank to bank, looking 'drumly and dour as it 
rowed on its way.' Mr. Howells was much interested in 
everything he saw in Edinburgh and its surroundings." 

May I add, well he might be, for it is one of the most 
beautiful and fascinating cities on the face of the globe. 
Let us hope he will write about it. The two other most 
beautiful cities for situation I have seen are Prague and 
Salzburg. 

Mr. Douglas's description of the wet at Melrose re- 
minds me of an expedition I made from there one afternoon 



©oane i^ctUxti 71 

to Dryburgh and the tombs of Sir Walter Scott and Lock- 
hart, when the very heavens were opened, and the rain came 
down more like a cataract than anything else. 

How the memories of Edinburgh crowd upon you as you 
write — the Castle, the High Street, St. Giles, the Parlia- 
ment House, the Tron, Holyrood, Arthur's Seat and so 
much else, as, for example, Prince's street, in the new town, 
the others being mostly in the old. How Sir Walter Scott 
has made it all live even for those who have never seen it, 
and how much more for those who have. 

Speaking of Sir Walter, I was much interested in reading 
in a book which I accidentally picked up in Bethlehem, a 
letter from Sir Walter Scott to Washington Irving, thank- 
ing him for a copy of "Knickerbocker," which he said he 
had been reading aloud to his wife and children at Abbots- 
ford until their sides ached and were sore with laughing, etc. 

But at this rate I shall never get home, as one thing sug- 
gests another. The journey from Boston was swift and 
expeditious. An old friend on the train who looks after 
checks and carriages did what he always does, got my lug- 
gage for me at once, and I was soon crossing the town, and 
speeding across the meadows on mv way to Newark. 

I wrote you on going that I had seen wild roses or eglan- 
tine by the waterways on the meadows. A friend who 
knows much more about flowers than I do, and who has 
taught me all of what little I do know, to whom I sent a 
copy of the letter, tells me that the flowers I saw were not 
wild roses, but marsh mallows, as they are in season just 
now, the roses having passed. She says the mistake might 
easily be made, as they are very much alike in shape and 
color. They had rather gone oflf; but in places there were 
masses of yellow flowers. I do not know what they were, 
but I do know that they gave the effect of a field of the 
cloth of gold. Call such things weeds! 

I do not know that I can better bring this rambling letter 
to a close than by transcribing the beautiful poem in full, a 
part of which I have already quoted. There are two poems, 
the only ones they each wrote, which have made their writ- 
ers immortal. One is "Home, Sweet Home," which an 
American, John Howard Payne, wrote; the other, "The 
Burial of Sir John Moore," written by an Irishman, Charles 
Wolfe. The Payne poem reads as follows: 



72 ©oane feetters 

'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, 

Be it ever so humble there's no place like home! 

A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there. 

Which, seek through the world, is not met with elsewhere. 

Home! home! Sweet, sweet home. 
There's no place like home. 

An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain; 

O give me my lowly thatched cottage again! 

The birds singing gaily that came at my call; 

Give me them, and the peace of mind dearer than all! 

Home! home! Sweet, sweet home, 
There's no place like home. 

"Dulce domum," as the Latins have it! 

Hood's lovely poem. "I remember, I remember the house 
where I was born," and Cowper's "My Mother's Picture," 
two little domestic poems, deserve to be bracketed with 
"Home, Sweet Home" as poems of the hearth and the fire- 
side, of the home. G. H. DOANE. 

Newark, Sept. 14, 1904. 



XTbe Golden ^flower 



There is promise of a, what shall I say — fine, glorious, 
good, splendid, superb, magnificent, beautiful — if you rolled 
all these adjectives and others into one you would not get 
a strong enough word to describe it — exhibition of the Gold- 
en Flower, for that is what chrysanthemum when rendered 
into English is, in the greenhouses at the end of the third 
division of Branch Brook Park. There will be hundreds of 
them. They are beautiful now, but only at their beginning. 
In two weeks or so they will be in their glory. 

I am indebted to the gardener, Mr. Houda, for the names 
of some of the other plants or flowers in the houses which 
I did not know. He has them all at his tongue's end. The 
chrysanthemums and all the plants are most symmetrically 
arranged. In the upper house they are garnished with a 
row all the way round of the most beautiful and brilliant 
tuberous begonias I ever saw, red, yellow, white, pink and 
white, salmon, single and double. Surely if ever there were 



©oane BL^titxB 73 

floral jewels they are these exquisite flowers, and they are 
well worth seeing now. 

In the middle house are some fine bedding plants and 
dracenas, and asparagus springeri. and coleus, and ferns, 
and acanthus. In the first of the houses fuchsias and agera- 
tum form the borders, and here are myrtle and heath plants 
and chrysanthemums, and in all the houses are to be seen 
the graceful strands of the vinca variegata vine hanging 
down from the benches. Over the entrance to each house 
has been trained an arch of chrysanthemums. They are all 
what gardeners would call healthy plants, vigorous and 
strong. 

Just now at the entrance of the middle division there are 
three varieties of asters in bloom, one, aster candefolius, 
light blue; one, aster novangelus. dark purple; one, aster 
multiflorus, pure white. The mingling of the colors makes 
them very attractive. I am indebted to the courteous su- 
perintendent Mr. Manning, for the names. Scotch heather 
has been in bloom this Autumn, and furze. The aster, it 
might be said, is the star flower, aster in Greek being star. 

The artesian well, 250 feet down, discharges 200,000 gal- 
lons a day, and will prove a great economy, saving the use 
of metered water from the city. The new buildings, stables, 
carpenters' and blacksmiths' shops, and sheds are not only 
useful but ornamental, models of their kind, and look like an 
old country farmsteading. It will be almost a pity to plant 
them out. The Elwood avenue entrance has been made. 
The grass throughout is as green as in early Spring. The 
low land in the upper part of the northern division has been 
filled up with earth, taken from the excavations for the 
bridges. It has been graded and seeded with grass, and 
next year the boys and girls will have still more spacious 
playing fields. 

New music stands have been put in four of the parks, 
Branch Brook, East Side, West Side and Orange. At 
Weequahic steps are being taken to clear the lake of bull- 
rushes and reeds and wild growth, and when that is done 
it will be a beautiful sheet of water, and the bridge over the 
railroad will complete the drive. The bridges are proceed- 
ing apace. The boats have been much used and attention 
has been attracted to them by signs on the trolley cars. 

I have before me a copy of the report of the Park Com- 
missioners for 1903, and it gives an excellent account of the 
vast and judicious work that has been done on the parks 



74 ®oane EettetB 

during the year. It has been published in the newspapers, 
so only a casual reference to it is called for. Fortunately, 
the Commissioners are unhampered now, as the courts have 
decided vexed questions in their favor, and one-half of the 
money voted for by the people on November 4, 1902, has 
been raised by the Freeholders and placed in their hands. 
The contemplated improvements are rapidly going on, and 
how fine they will be. The result will be a perfect and com- 
pleted work. The Delaware and Lackawanna Railroad and 
the Commissioners are working harmoniously together. 

Attention is called to the beautiful fountain which is such 
an embellishment to the southern division of Branch Brook 
Park, and while the discharge is greater than that of any 
other fountain in the world, the water is not wasted, but is 
used for the low service system. How the watery diamonds 
sparkle and play as the sun shines upon them and the wind 
drives and tosses them about! The Board of Street and 
Water Commissioners has cordially co-operated with the 
Park Commissioners in the matter of the fountain. 

The extensive woodland is being well cared for and super- 
fluous and interfering trees are being removed. All this is 
admirably set forth in the exhaustive letter on the subject 
from the Olmsted brothers, the landscape architects, with 
which the report closes. The civil engineers, the architects, 
and the landscape architects and gardeners are rapidly trans- 
forming the land, and are doing much to develop its re- 
sources, and make it beautiful as well. Thanks to them, the 
last few years have seen wonderful improvements and prog- 
ress in those respects in every direction, and we have an 
object lesson of this in the parks and in the new Courthouse 
in our midst. 

Akin to this is the work of the street tree commission. 
They are beginning their work again, and it is a pity they 
are not more amply supplied with funds. In this connec- 
tion it may be said that other work is needed on the streets. 
Many of them are very dirty and full of holes and broken 
pavements. A systematic examination should be made and 
steps taken to correct these evils, which are a great draw- 
back, not only to looks but also to convenience. All which 
is respectfully recommended to the Board of Works and 
Common Council of our good and fair city of Newark. The 
Park Commissioners have set the standard, and everything 
about the city and county should be in keeping with that. 

G. H. DOANE. 

Newark, Oct. 5, 1904. 



©oane feetters 75 



TLbc Xast IRose of Summer' 



Here and there throughout the grounds of the first or 
southern division of Branch Brook Park, up to a few days 
ago, you came across an occasional rose which suggested 
Moore's sweetest melody about the "last rose of Summer 
left blooming alone." 

The whole countryside is now in its Autumn beauty. 
Nature's polychrome. The variety of tints of the leaves is 
great and striking. As a rule, they are subdued, a very few 
brilliant ones reappearing this year. The browns and rus- 
sets and yellows and olives and maroons prevail. They 
reminded me the other day of an experience I once had in 
London. I was to execute a commission on Liberty's fa- 
mous shop for silks. As the colors were all subdued, I 
asked if they had no brighter ones. One of the young sales- 
women — they were all dressed in costume with lovely silk 
kerchiefs of different colors round their throats — said, with 
a real London drawl: "On, no, we have only art colors!" 
So it is with the woods this year, only art colors. 

The parks are at their autumnal best just now, with the 
divine October air. They are sources not only of pleasure, 
but of health to all who have the good fortune to enter 
them. Weequahic Park is well worth a visit to see what 
progress has been made in clearing the lake of reeds and 
bulrushes. The lower half is almost entirely clear. When 
the other, the upper half, is clear, it will be a beautiful sheet 
of water, blue as the heavens above, and a superb place in 
Winter for skating; in bummer for boating and aquatic 
sports. Being a mile long and some 500 teet wide, regattas 
can be held there to great advantage as the water, unlike 
that of the Passaic, is clear as crystal. The water has been 
raised and some few of the trees have been submerged and 
sacrificed, like Philae, by the waters of the Nile. You can 
not have everything in this world, and the lake was wortji 
the sacrifice. Then there are plenty of trees left. 

At the head of the lake is a fine grove of trees of different 
kinds, and there are many dogwoods among them. The last 
time I went there, in the Spring, they were in bloom. Yes- 
terday they showed themselves with the unmistakable color 
of their maroon leaves and red berries in Autumn attire. 
A friend prettily calls this season the sunset of the year. 



7^ ©oane EeftetB 

The flowers in the Branch Brook greenhouses are rapidly 
opening out, and by next Sunday, the day on which this let- 
ter will appear, will be at their best, and they should be seen 
by throngs. In addition to the plants I saw there the other 
day and wrote about, are the Isclepsis Gracilis, or maiden- 
hair; the Cyperus Quadrifolius, the Salvia patens, with its 
blue flowers; the Myralaica Leucodendron, and others. 
There are about 2,000 chrysanthemums of the two varieties, 
the Chinese, compact and solid in its bloom, and Japanese, 
loose and stringy. The chrysanthemum is the national 
flower of Japan and is emblazoned on the banners of the 
Japanese armies, which are almost daily winning such ex- 
traordinary victories over the Russians in the Far East. 

The variety of the exhibition is very great, as the follow- 
ing list will show. Labels will guide those who wish to ex- 
amine more carefully. Among them will be found President 
Smith, Captain Bridley, Eda Brass, Major Bonafifon, Chest- 
nut Hill, Ermenilla, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Janariva, 
H. W. Reiman, Polly Rose, Glory of Pacific, Mrs. G. Van- 
derbilt. Ivory, Apollo, Georgiana Bramhall, Golden Wed- 
ding, Mrs. Bullock, Mrs. Simpson, Colonel Appleton, Mrs. 
E. D. Smith, T. Barrington, John Shrimpton, Henry Hur- 
rell, Garza, Lawn Tennis, Golden Gate, Lillian Russell, Mrs. 
Henry Robinson, Modesta, Hicks Arnold, Vivian Morel, 
Mrs. Theis, Souci, Timothy Eaton, Morelius, Mrs. Franklin 
Murphy, Broomhead, Mrs. T. S. Park, Minerva, President 
Carnot, Mutual Friend, J. R. Franta, Nelly Pocket, John 
Pocket, Malcolm Lamont and Brutus. Among the new va- 
rieties are Portica, Louis Boehmer, Tiger, Mrs. Barkley, 
Mrs. F. T. Vallis, F. A. Cobbold, Henry Barres, L. S. 
Wright, Madame Gahuzal, W. Dunkham, Ben Wells, Don- 
ald McLean, General Fulton, Miss Wilderes Warre, May- 
nel, Harrison Dick, Leila Falknis and Dr. Engel Hard. This 
"catalogue raisonnee" will show how extensive the collec- 
tion is and what an immense amount of work and pains and 
care it must have taken to prepare it, and get it together. 
The arrangement is perfect. Chrysanthemums propagate 
themselves by shoots from the old plants. They are kept in 
a cool place, and in April or May the shoots appear. They 
are cut oflf and planted. They root themselves and form the 
plants of the next season. To get the larger flowers all the 
blooms are nipped off but one. Some are much earlier than 
others, some blooming now and some not blooming until 
well on in November. They are very useful for decoration. 



®cdne £etter6 ^^ 

as when cut and put in water they remain bright and fresh 
for da3'S. 

I was amused the other da}-^ by a lady bringing me some 
dried specimens of plants that she had picked up in the 
woods. She had been led, I suppose by my letters to you, 
to think I know more about these things than I do, that I 
was a botanist. I referred her to one who is, Professor Ap- 
gar, and a few days afterward she showed me his answer, 
which told her what she wanted to know. I am no botanist, 
but the merest tyro, only an admirer and lover of flowers, 
and, in fact, of every beautiful thing, with perception enough 
to notice them and curiosity enough to inquire what they are. 

Those who have the opportunity would do well to drive 
out to Eagle Rock and South Mountain Reservation before 
the colored leaves have fallen from the trees and they stand 
bare to face the Winter blast. The whole side of Orange 
Mountain is a study now in its ''coat of many colors." I 
quote a stanza which sounds like Bryant, from a pretty little 
poem called "The Autumn Fires," which describes in verse 
what I have been trying to describe in prose: 
"The maple glows in crimson, and the birch in rarest gold, 
And a blaze of amber beauty wraps the beeches in its fold — 
Still the mystic torches touch them, in the evenings calm 

and cold. 
And the Autumn fires are burning on the hill." 

G. H. DOANE. 

Newark, Oct. i8, 1904. 



Lafa 



R lb 1905 



